
Class F35I 
Book W 1 7 

Gopiglrtl^]^- 



THE -l^lk- 



MISSISSIPPI 



VALLEY, 



AND 



PREHISTORIC EVENTS: 

GIVING AN 

ACCOUNT OF THE OKIGIXAL FORMATION AND EARLY 

CONDITION OF THE GREAT VALLEY; OF ITS 

VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE; OF ITS FIRST 

INHABITANTS, THE MOUND BUILDERS, 

ITS MINERAL TREASURES 

AND AGRICULTURAL 

DEVELOPMENTS. 

ALL FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES, 



By C. B. walker. 






R. T. ROOT, PUBLISHER. 

BURLINGTON, IOWA. 

1879. 

9^ 



Entered for Copyright in 1878, R. T. Root. "All rightB reserved.' 



F3S1 



PREFACE. 



The object of this book is to supply the means of ac- 
quiring a clear idea of the Origin, Extent, Resources, and 
Development of the Mississippi Valley. No work before the 
public embraces this information. 

Can a subject apparently so familiar in its general features 
as the development of the Valley of the Mississippi be 
clothed with fresh interest? A brilliant and durable pros- 
perity must have an extraoidinary cause ; and a region that 
has reacted with such happy eifect on the character and 
destinies of a great nation must be worthy of close study. 
That study will show that the Valley is onl}^ beginning to 
make itself felt in the country and the world, that its natural 
advantages are wholly unequaled by any section of the globe, 
and that its People and Institutions are equally superior. 

Scientific studies on its original formation have been 
principally confined to learned books. Presented in a con- 
densed and popular form, they will be found of fascinating 
interest; while a complete view of its surface features, its 
vast area, its variety of climate and soil, its agricultural and 
mineral resources, its rivers, lakes, and plains, and wide ex- 
panding rim, with the peculiar course and significance of 
its human history, show it to be the grandest and most 
desirable region in the world. It is to be a mighty element 
in a wonderful Future. The works of the Mound Builders, 
before authentic history began, furnish evidence that it was 



S 1' li K i' ACE. 

even then the abode of a numerous and prosperous people, 
and nourished one of the Primitive Civilizations of the world. 
The publisher feels justified in saying that in all the range 
of English literature no publication can be found embodying 
so many valuable and interesting facts, collected from reli- 
able scientific investigators and from the remains of an- 
tiquity, presented in a manner so pleasing, and, at the same 
time, free from dry and tedious details. It can not fail to 
please all friends of literature and science. 



INTRODUCTION 



Within the hist half centuiy the world has been passing 
through changes of a new and striking kind. Many ten- 
dencies that had been long ac(|uiring strength in secret, have 
suddenly come to the surface and taken control of life and 
thought ; directness and force, leading to results of world- 
wide importance such as no previous period could show, 
have become characteristic of most displa3^s of energy in 
practical fields, and made the general situation for mankind 
at hirge extremely different. It reminds us of the flowering 
time of the plant when new parts are suddenly unfolded, 
new purposes and powers revealed, and all its vital energies 
concentrated on the final work of maturing the fruit. 

Science is one of the chief factors in this suddenly quick- 
ened progress. It has learned to make its studies at once 
minute, comprehensive, and accurate. By carefully ex- 
amining every particular, putting all the facts together to 
learn the significance of the whole, and then returning to a 
consideration of the relation of the parts to the general 
result, it seems to lay iKire the secrets of nature. There are 
few things which it appears capable of concealing from an 
inquiry so searching, and the practical and the mental 
worlds seem to share about equally in the grand discoveries. 
The earth and the history of man have acquired a new 
meaninof, and are invested with srreater interest. 

Tracing effects back to causes, science finds conclusive 
proof of what before could only be dimly suspected, that 

(-) 



8 I N T K O D U C T I O N . 

all things are ])Oiin(] together iu a true unity ; that the solid 
earth has passed through a succession of changes as orderly 
as the stages of growth in a plant or an animal, each change 
contributing to the general advance toward a foreseen end. 
It is continually finding new evidence that the earth was 
fitted up with reference to human history ; and history is 
found to show more clearly the more carefully it is studied, 
that it has been guided with reference to the structure and 
varying resources of different regions of the earth. 

The physical structure of Europe has exerted immense 
influence on civilization, ancient and modern ; the wonderful 
effect of the peculiar resources and position of England 
on its people and the world is well known. The American 
continent as a whole, the transfer of European institutions to 
it and their subsequent re-action on development in Europe, 
also illustrate this law. The Mississippi Valley is in itself 
a case strongly in point, and in some peculiar ways. 

Its grand outlines were drawn in the earliest geological 
times ; it was constructed with great simplicity throughout 
its general surface, but very elaborately on its borders, 
where all the resources of volcanic force, of heat and chemi- 
cal activity were taxed to enrich it with various treasures ; 
glaciers of almost continental magnitude were employed to 
provide it with a rich, deep soil ; it has an unrivaled loca- 
tion and its system of water-ways gives it a niagnifieent 
unity. Nature was lavish of her best, and did not change 
her mood from first to last. 

It is interesting and significant to note how carefully the 
course of human history was guided to preserve this fortu- 
nate Valley from permanent occupation by any people whose 
genius and stage of development rendered them unfit to be 
its heirs. The primitive civilization of the Mound Builders • 
was broken up before it became too strong, being, probably, 
more fully developed in Central America and Mexico ; the 



INTRODUCTION. i) 

Indians were no true owners since they sought little bnt its 
game and wild fruits, and soon gave v/ny to a superior race ; 
the Spaniards flitted across the Lower Valley or along its 
coasts, and disappeared, overwhelmed in the misfortunes 
produced by their own violence ; the French soldier or 
priest was soon lost to view under the forests, or maintained 
a precarious and uninfluential foothold at a few points along 
the rivers ; and the Spanish, French, and English govern- 
ments intrigued in vain with Indians and colonists to estab- 
lish their control over it in later years. 

But there was a people to whom the Valley took kindly, 
among whom were the germs of thouglit and character 
which could produce the best institutions and make the 
wisest nse of its great resources. They wandered across 
the eastern mountains, under the friendly shelter of the tall 
forests, and felt themselves at home. Though the Indian 
swung his tomahawk and raised the war-whoop, nature 
smiled on them. They had no thought of retreat, though 
the settler must be warrior as well as farmer for almost a 
generation. The trees fell before his axe, and gradually the 
o-rain fields waved o-reen and gold in the summer breeze — 
rough homes of peace and plenty multiplied over the whole 
vast region ; the rudeness and vices of the border soon gave 
place to the well-settled order of old communities ; while 
the freeman found, himself nowhere so free, the business 
man was nowhere so prosperous, and the State, the school, 
the church, the press were nowhere so flourishing. 

Here was ample room to show that unrestricted political 
freedom does not necessarily lead to disorder ; that business 
and trade are governed by laws of their own, which may 
correct the disturbances of personal ambition ; and that a 
loose society, with little pressure but its own choice, may 
prefer to establish and maintain the best institutions of the 
hiirhest civilization. The time had come for such lessons to 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

be very effective. Presently England gave most of her col- 
onies equal freedom, and the tension of authority among the 
nations of the Old World has long been giving way. 

Thus we find the first and the last parts of the Valley's 
history unified. A thread of intention connects its geology 
with the latest develojDments in the history of its enterpris- 
ing inhabitants, and the whole forms a prophecy of the fu- 
ture of no small interest. Accumulated causes, in our day, 
hurry into effects ; industrial and commercial fore; s have 
become immense — in the Valley especial!}' — and arc daily 
gathering strength, and the surprises of the past will sink 
into insio-nificance before those of the near future. 

The problems of liberty and national unity have been 
solved already and completely by the help of the Valley. 
But these were only preliminary questions-. How shall these 
boundless resources be so used that all classes of the people 
shall be prosperous ? How shall the great questions of in- 
dustry, finance, and commerce be settled so that injustice 
shall he done to none? Nature here furnishes the means to 
any desired extent ; it is the true adjustment that is re- 
quired ; the field is roomy, the forces are fairly free to move. 
Notwithstanding many seeming contradictions, man and 
nature, here at least, are equally well meaning, on the whole, 
and the harmonizing law of relations and interests is a(-tive 
and strong. We may therefore believe that the beneficent 
re-action of the Great Valley on the welfare of the nation 
has only begun. 



COISTTEISTTS 



PART FIRST. 



THE ANCIENT HISTOEY OP THE MISSISSIPPI YALLEY 

AND OP THE MOUND BUILDERS, AS RELATED 

BY SOIENOE. 



True Science dates from the Times of Columbus — The difficulties met in 
searching for Sound Principles and Methods — The Caution and Pre- 
cision now employed by men of Science. 

CHAPTER I. 

HOW NATURE FORMED THE GREAT VALLEY 33 

The Forces employed by Nature have Written their History in the 
Rocks — The Earth originally a Molten Fiery Mass, whicli gradually 
cooled — The immense Forces proceeding from Contraction — How- 
Continents were outlined, their Parts raised and Mountains elevated 
—The Outlining of the Great Valley. 

CHAPTER 11. 

HOW ROCKS ARE MADE AND HOW THEIR ''STORY" IS READ. 41 

The Four Geological "Times" and Classes of Rocks — Primordial Time 
and Azoic Rocks, i. e., without Life — Paleozoic Rocks containing 
Ancient Forms of Life — Mesozoic Rocks containing Medireval or 
Middle Forms of Life — Cenozoic Rocks showing Recent Forms of 
Life — The Great Coal-making Period — The Great Mountain-making 
Periods. 

(li) 



12 CO Is TENT S . 

CHAPTER in. 

HOW NATURE FINISHED THE VALLEY AND PREPARED IT 



FOR MAN. 



48 



The Tertiary Period preceding the Age of Man— The Qiiaternary, or 
Recent Period, including the Age of Man — The Glacial Period, or the 
Age of Ice— The Drift it formed, and how it was distributed — The 
Champlain Period and draining of the Valley— The Vegetable Mould 
gradually produced completes the Work. 



CHAPTER IV. 

VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE — ^ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 55 

The wonderful Skill and Intelligence of the Life Force— How did it 
Originate, and How was it Propagated? — Various Theories — Simi- 
larities and Difterences in Animal atid Vegetable Forms of Life. 



CHAPTER V. 

VEGETATION IN THE VALLEY, ANCIENT AND MODERN 63 

The two great Classes of Vegetable Forms — Vegetable Life probably 
preceded Animal Life — The first known Forms — The small number 
of Early Forms preserved— The Forests of the Coal Period — Vege- 
tation after the Coal Period— Forest Trees after the Mountains were 
raised. 

CHAPTER VI. 

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VALLEY, ANCIENT AND MODERN 70 

The Five great Divisions of Animal Life — Most Ancient Forms — Life in 
the Palasozoic Rocks — Gradual introduction of Higher Forms — No 
Animal with Lungs belore the Coal Period — Probable reason — Life 
after the Coal Period in Mesozoic Time— More Recent Animals — 
Man the Ideal Animal. 



CONTENTS. 13 

CHAPTER VII. 

GENERAL VIEW OF THE FINISHED VALLEY = 81 

The Great River and its Principal Branches — The Subordinate Rivers and 
their Basins — The Gulf Slope — The Prairies and their Origin — Gen- 
eral Relations within and without — The Readiness with which it gives 
up its vast Treasures. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MINERAL TREASURES OF THE VALLEY 89 

The Causes that produced its Extensive Deposits of useful Minerals — 
Every Geological Age worked well for the Valley — Iron Deposits in 
the Primitive Rock — In Later Formations — Fine Qi^iality and favora- 
ble Distribution — Copper-bearing Rocks — Lead of Lower Silurian 
Rocks — Building Stone — Salt and its Origin — Petroleum — Extraordi- 
nary Supply of Coal. 

CHAPTER IX. 

AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES OF THE VALLEY 97 

Adaptation of the Valley to a vast Development of Commerce and Manu- 
factures — However great in other respects, ^Agriculture will always 
Lead — The remarkable Q^ialities of the Soil — The Climate and Rain- 
fall of different Sections — Comparison of Mississippi Valley with 
Russia and the Valley of the Amazon — Points of Superiority to 
every other Region. 

CHAPTER X. 

THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THE FIRST MEN IN THE 

VALLEY 113 

The Champlain Period and huge Animals — Traces of Man in connection 
with the Mastodon — Men in tlie Valley as early as in Europe — Where 
did they come from? — Unlikeness to any Old World Race — The 
Mounds in the Valley — The conclusion that the people who made 
them had an Organized Government and Institutions, unavoidable. 



14 C O X T E X T S 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE LABORS OF THE MOUND BUILDERS..... H'? 

The great number of the Mounds— Mounds classed as Fortifications, 
Temples. Altars, Sepulchres, etc— Careful Study of them by Men o: 
Science— Number and Character of Military Enclosures— Fort Hill 
and Fort Ancient, Ohio— Temple Mounds and Enclosures— Works at 
Newark. Ohio— Cahokia and Seltzertown Mounds— Altars of Sacri- 
fice — Burial Mounds— Mounds not made by Indians. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHARACTER OF THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THEIR 

INSTITUTIONS 133 

Mental Q^ialities as shown by their Skulls — Their Physical Qiialities— 
Evidences of a Settled Government — Their numbers and Proof that 
they were Agriculturists — Military and Mathematical Knowledge — 
Their Art Remains indicate considerable Advancement — The great 
Difficulties they had to overcome in Industry and Art— Their Relig- 
ious Institutions — Proofs of Sun Worship— Of Human Sacrifices — 
Their Priesthood — Evidences of Connection with Central America 
and Mexico — Sudden Disappearance- Conclusions. 



PART SECOND, 



i-HE INDIAN TBIBES AND EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT 
or THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE WILD HUNTERS OF THE VALLEY 155 

Indians totally different from Mound Builders— Their habits, military and 
political organization— Comparison of Brain with Mound Builders 
and Europeans— Difficulty of accepting Civilization, and its Causes— 
Their manly and childish Q^ialities— Unhappy effect of contact with 
Civilized Races— Limited Success of Indian Confederations— Their 
Origin— Inferences from Language— No Traces of former hij^her 
culture or mixture of Races. 



CHAPTER II. 

DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION BY THE SPANIARDS 1G7 

Character of Spanish Conquests of the Sixteenth Century— They were 
Religious Crusades— Their Unsparing Cruelty— DeSoto's Expedition. 

CHAPTER III. 



THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH 



CENTURY. 



,175 



The Modern Tone of their Missions and Conquests— Marquette and 
joliet— The great Vigor and Misfortunes of La Salle— Bienville at 
the Mouth of the Mississippi. 

(15) 



16 CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLISH EXPLORATIONS IN THE VALLEY IN THE EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY 18a 

The Aims of English Settlers different from those of Spanish and 
French — English Traders and Colonists — Cause of Indian HostiUty 
to them — Contest of English and French for the Possession of the 
Valley. 



CHAPTER V. 
THE Indian's defence of his hunting grounds 

AGAINST THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH 191 

The Massacre of the Natchez— The Chickasaws and Choctaws Successfully 
Resist the French — English Policy in the South Against the French — 
Indians Assist the French in the Upper Valley — Pontiac's Designs 
and their Failure. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE INDIANS MAKE WAR ON THE AMERICAN PIONEERS.200 

Indian Titles to the Valley — Purchases by the English and Colonial 
Authorities — English Policy during the Revolution — Courage of 
Early Settlers — Bloody Contest during the War in Kentucky and 
Tennessee — Success of Gen.. George Rogers Clarke — Struggle of 
Indians for Northwest Territory — St. Clair's Defeat — Wayne's 
Victory. 



CHAPTER VII. 

TECUMSEH AND HIS ALLIES 209 

Fifteen Years Peace — Character and Purposes of Tecumseh — His Organi- 
zation in the North— His Visit to the Creeks— The War of 1812— The 
Indians in the English Armies — Fearful Massacres North and South — 
Death of Tecumseh— Gen. Jackson and the Creeks — Final Subjuga- 
tion of the Indians — Indian Policy and Later Contests. 



C O NT P: N T S . 17 



CHAPTER virr. 

THE HEROIC PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT 222 

Daniel Boone and his Companions — The First Settlers in Tennessee — 
The Spread of Settlement in Kentucky — Incidents of the War in 
Kentucky— The Brave Girl— The Young Hero— The Prudent Boys— 
The Two Wounded Men — The Number of Settlers in 1795. 

CHAPTER IX. 

WHOLESALE SETTLEMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES 239 

The Two Heroic States— Settlement of Ohio and the Northwest— Settle- 
ment in the Lower Valley— Population in iSoo— The Situation in 
1812— Sudden Diffusion of Settlement after the War— Transportation 
on the Rivers— Social Habits in i3i6— Population in 1820.'';" 

CHAPTER X. 

THE STEAMBOAT ERA 250 

The Isolation of the Valley and Want of Markets in Early Times— Great 
Improvement about 1820 on Introduction of Steamboats— Gain of 
Settlers in 1830— The Southern Valley— Vast Immigration between 
1830 and 1850— Need of a new Carrying Agent. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE RAILROAD ERA 257 

The Difficulty of Building Railways before 1850— California Gold and the 
Extension of Railroads— Transfer of population from the East to the 
West— Increase of Population between 1850 and i860. 

CHAPTER XII. 

CONSTITUTIONAL BEGINNINGS BY THE EARLY SETTLERS.263 

The Sturdy Character of the American Colonist— Fortunate Escape of the 
Valley from Spanish, French and English Rule— Miscarriage of Pro- 
prietary Companies in Early Settlements — Significance of the Rea- 
son— 'Articles of Association" of Wautauga Settlement— County Or- 
ganizations in Kentucky and Tennessee— The " State of Franklin"— 
Its History Illustrates American Character— Foreign Intrigues in the 
Valley. 



IS CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM FOR CREATING NEW STATES 274 

The "Ordinance of 17S7" — It becomes a virtual Territorial Constitution 
— Its Wise Provisions — The Constitution of the United States as a 
Definition of State and Popular Rights — Liberal Interpretation of 
Theory in Practice. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

STATE CONSTITUTIONS 292 

History of the Organization of each Territory and State in the Valley — 
Special Features of each State Constitution detailed — The Features 
Common to all the States — Summary of Results. 



CHAPTER XV. 

NATIONALITY OF EMIGRANTS TO THE VALLEY, AND THEIR 

ORIGINAL CHARACTER 320 

Immigrants from the Atlantic States in Different Periods — Their Enter- 
prise and Intelligence — Immigrants from the British Isles — They are 
Branches from our own Stock — Immigrants from Northern and Cen- 
tral Europe — The readiness with which they '"Fall into Line" — The 
French Settlers in the Valley. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PIONEERS OF KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE 325 

Their bold and hardy Qiialities — The combination of the wi.'y Hunter 
and the practical Farmer in them — The Independence and self-asser- 
tion acquired — The influence of these qualities on the later History 
of the Valley — They furnish a leading Type of Character. 



C ONTE NTS . 19 

CHAPTER XVII. 

NEW ENGLAND IN THE WEST 333 

The thoughtful, logical and enterprising character of the New England 
Tvpe of Americans — Long isolation and much hardship did not 
injure, hut improved the Type— What the Yankee lost and what he 
gained in the woods and prairies of the West — The Undertone thus 
given to Western Habits and Institutions— The later New Englander, 
what he gave and what he received. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER IN THE VALLEY 339 

The peculiar character of Pioneer Life in the Southern Valley — The 
social qualities and intelligence promoted — The Master, the Servant, 
the Gentleman, and the American Citizen in the Southern Valley. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS AS AMERICAN CITIZENS 346 

The Foreign elements at different Periods — The readiness with which 
they caught the American Spirit — Liberalizing influence of the For- 
eign Element of the Population — The Fusion or combined results of 
all these elements of character in the Valley. 

CHAPTER XX. 

EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS IN THE VALLEY 352 

Origin and Progress of Popular Education in Europe and the Eastern 
States — Early Embarrassments to Common Schools in the Valley — 
The eager interest soon displayed — Great and intelligent develop- 
ment from 1850 to i860— Newspapers and Churches. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS TO 1860 362 

Early Manufactures and their steady increase — Progress of Commerce 
and Trade — Agricultural beginnings — Progress limited only by 
capacity of markets — Investment of Capital and production of wealth 
in different periods. 



20 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE VALLEY IN I 86o 367 

Review of favorable features of Valley History to i860 — The disadvan- 
tages from industrial and political opposition between the two sec- 
tions — Neither the River nor Railway systems could overcome them — 
Influence of these two systems on the Civil War. 

CHAPTER XXIIL 

THE CONFLICT AND ITS LESSONS 374 

Military Strategy and the Railroads — Operations on the Rivers — Other 
lines of defence and attack — Conquest of principal lines decides the 
War — How the Valley tends to preserve the unity of the whole 
country. 



PART THIRD. 



THE NEW EEA IN THE VALLEY. 
CHAPTER I. 

THE SOUTHERN VALLEY AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. ..087 

The Misfortunes of the People— The Losses in Capital— The Disorganiza- 
tion of Industry — The South must begin anew. 

CHAPTER II. 

CHANGES IN THE SOUTHERN VALLEY AFTER THE WAR 394 

Re-arrangement of the Labor System — Political Changes— The New 
Situation Fairly Established — The New Career Open — How Ameri- 
cans Manage a Difficulty — Constitutional Changes 

CHAPTER III. 

THE UPPER VALLEY DURING THE WAR 406 

Causes of the Uninterrupted Development of the Upper Valley During 
the War — The East and West Railroad System — Agricultural Ma- 
chinery, Immigration, and Circulation of Money — Its Products find 
Excellent Markets — A fine Situation. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE NEW STARTING POINT 410 

The Fresh Impulses Furnished to Enterprise — A Hopeful Energy Create;^ 
Resources — The Era of Results Succeeds the Era of Beginnings — The 
Benefits and Evils Resulting from the War. 

(21 ) 



22 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER V. 

VAST EXTENSION OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM 416 

Completion of the Pacific Railroad— Rapid Development of the Western 
Valley — Immense increase of Business multiplies Shorter Roads and 
completes Long Routes — Advantages of the Railroad Furor — Tiie 
Sudden Reaction. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PRODUCTION OF MINERAL WEALTH IN THE NEW ERA.. .434 

Increase of Iron Production in the Valley — Consumption of Iron and 
Steel — Progress of Coal Mining — Significance of these Facts — Petro- 
leum, Copper and Salt — Precious Metals on the Rocky Mountain 
Bordvir in 1872 — Progress and General Probabilities. 



CHAPTER VII. 



RAPID GROWTH OF MANUFACTURES. 



.428 



Value of Railroads in Diffusing Industries and Developing the Capacities 
of every Region — Comparison of Earlier and Later Statistics of Man- 
ufactures — Great Relative Growth in the Center of the Country. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TRANSFER OF INDUSTRIES TO THE VALLEY 432. 

It is Promoted by Ready Access to Material— By the Nearness of Pur- 
chasers—By the Large Margin of Profit— Indications of Transl'er as a 
Fact— Growth oi' Large Cities in the Valley— Manufactures in the 
Eastern, the Central and the Southeastern Valley. 

CHAPTER IX. 

CULTIVATED AREAS AND FARM VALUES IN THE NEW ERA. .439 

Gain of Acreage Cultivated from 1S60 to 1S70— Losses in the South — 
Later Gains— Facts from Census— Later Values— The Period of In- 
vestments and the Period of Profits. 



CONTENTS. 23 

CHAPTER X. 

THE GIFTS OF TIIK SOIL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION . .114 

Grain Pi-oduction in Various Years — Crop'5 and Prices— Other pioducts 
of the Farm — The Law of Expansion — The South and the Southwest. 

CHAPTER XL 

COMP.^RISON OF AGRICULTURE AND OF OTHER INDUSTRIES. .451 

Comparison of Data for Fifty Years — Farm Products and Alining— Agri- 
culture and Manufactures — Foreign Export. 

CHAPTER XII. 

COMMERCE OF THE RIVERS AND THE LAKES 457' 

Earlier and Later Statistics — Carriage bj Water and by Railway — The 
Future of Water-ways. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

DIRECT FOREIGN COMMEKCE OF THE VALLEY 4G4 

The Past and the Present of Commerce — The great Changes preparing — 
Atlantic Commeice — The future of South American Commerce — 
The Mississippi Valley, the Isthmus Canal and Pacific Commerce. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STIMULANTS TO EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR 469 

The Educating Influence of the War — New demands on Scientific and 
Teclmical Education — Sudden removal of Barriers to Observation — 
Educating power of Intense and Comprehensive Activity — Newspa- 
pers and Libraries. 



24 cox T y. NTS. 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE WONDERFUL PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION 474 

The Funds devoted to School purposes in iS6o and 1S70 — Schools in the 
different States —The great improvement in Methods— Normal 
Schools — Universities and Colleges — Significance of School Systems 
in New States. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE GROWING BREADTH OF RELATIONS TO THE OUTSIDE 

WORLD 482 

Relations to the Commerce .-ind Manufactures of the East — To the Mining 
and Commerce of the Wet.t — A New World of Relations. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE NEW UNITY OF THE VALLEY 406 

A Financial Crisis, and the Telegrapli and Railway Systems — The East, 
the West and the Valley in a Financial Storm — The Valley comes to 
the Front — It is a World in itself — True Centralization. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT OF AMERICAN HISTORY.. ..501 

Early directions in Development have not been changed — Expansion and 
Union of American T_)pes of Character — The American Idea and 
Manhood Suffrage — The free operation of Natural Law renders 
Catastrophes impossible. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT, AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY... 509 

The Old Theory of Government shown to be False — Fifteen Years of 
European History — American connection with the Regeneration of 
European Governments — The Law of Change. 



CONTENTS. 25 



CHAPTER XX. 

A HISTORY OF THK PROPHETS OF EVIL 519 

The Dark Side of the Picture — The Serious Dangers of the Past — How 
thej Disappeared — '• Beware of False Prophets." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE AMERICA OF THE FUTURE 527 

The Monroe Doctrine and its Fruits — The Continent Unified in the Valley 
— The Rule of Reason and Interest — Can Intelligence and Science 
cease to Develop? — The Securities furnished by the Past and the 
Present — The Certainties of the Future — Its Probabilities. 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



PART FIRST. 



THE ANCIENT HISTOEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AND OF THE 
MOUND BUILDERS, AS RELxVTED BY SCIENCE. 

The discoveries of Columbus, and of Portuguese mariners 
shortly before, opened an era of great importance to Europe 
and to mankind. They lifted the veil that hid another world 
from the eyes of the dawning modern civilization, enlarged 
tenfold the field of adventure and of business activity, and 
stimulated enterprise by the promise of brilliant rewards. 
For a thousand years Europe had been a general battle Held, 
whereon fierce passions, towering ambitions and contiicting 
interests had wasted the resources of church and state. These 
new openings for energy gradually relieved the deadly stress 
of coniiict between nations and classes, and changed destruc- 
tive forces into agents of progress and prosperity. In this 
reconstruction of views and interests, which was made slowly 
but surely, many illusions and false notions, religious, social 
and political, disappeared. Mankind seemed now to come 
of age, so to speak, and enter, for the first time, on the serious 
work of life. 

New experiences and a vast multitude of new facts could 
not all be harmonized with old theories, and the habit of more 
attentive observation, which the necessity of fresh explana- 
tions gradually introduced, led to the re-organization of the 
old sciences and to the development of many new ones. It was 

27 



28 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the starting point of truer study by more careful investigation. 
The workl, for instance, was proved to be round by mariners 
who constantly sailed in the same direction till they at length 
came back to their starting point; this laid a solid foundation 
for a true theoiy of the planetary system and the starry world ; 
stimulated inquiry into the laws that govern the motions of 
the heavenly bodies, and thus enlarged and corrected the 
Science of Astronomy. In a similar way every branch of 
knowledge profited by the great events of the Columbian Era. 

Yet it took a long time to find out the most effective and 
reliable methods of study, and to teach men not to draw con- 
clusions too hastily. Many difficulties were met in organiz- 
ing this practical school. It was not easy to throw off the 
influence of old habits and views, and men found it liard to 
believe that those who had been revered for their learning in 
former times could have made so many great mistakes. The 
great men and the theories of the past had become identified 
with institutions whose influence and authority seemed to be 
attacked by the new learning, and persecution was frequently 
added to the other embarrassments of the student of science. 

Many of the sciences required long and difficult researches, 
and the observations which must furnish the material for true 
theories accumulated facts slowly. The science of geology 
properly commenced with the inquiry how marine shells could 
have been placed in the heart of rocks and on the top of moun- 
tains. It was long before the true explanation could be found. 
Some rocks did not contain shells at all, ])ut bore the appear- 
ance of having cooled from a melted state. These were so 
numerous, especially in some regions, that it was believed by 
some that all rock was formed in that way, although that view 
did not satisfactorily account for the rocks containing the shells. 
Other regions showed very few, or none, of these fire-made 
rocks, nearly all contained the remains of organic life, and, 
the principal effVtrt being to account for them, the theory was 
advanced that all rocks were formed in water. Much study 



THE GROWTH OF MODERN SCIENCE. 29 

and discussion followed before it was seen that both these 
theories were necessary to a complete explanation. 

Sometimes it was necessary that one science should reach a 
certain degree of perfection before it could shed tlie necessary 
liglit on important questions of another; and in others the 
whole world had to be pretty well known before the true 
theory could be framed. There was a great attraction in mak- 
ing fresh discoveries, the interest the questions raised con- 
stantly increased, and, as every part of the earth became 
more fully known to the civilized world, the dark points were 
gradually cleared up. A theory that is nearest the truth will 
explain the largest number of facts, and, led on by increasing 
breadth and clearness of explanation, men of science slowly 
and painfully conquered the difficulties in their way. 

But, if the conquest was slow and painful, it was also sure, 
for it had the solid basis of nature to rest on. If they made 
mistakes, examined too hastily, and formed conclusions with- 
out the most mature consideration, the ever accumulating facts 
would convict them of error. In this way they learned extreme 
caution, sought the most accurate instruments and methods to 
aid their investigations, and, in our own day, have become 
renowned for the precise and patient care bestowed on their 
labors. ''Scientific Accuracy" implies the most thorough 
study and the most absolute certainty which the nature of the 
subject admits. 

The glory of all past ages pales before the achievements of 
the scientific world of our generation and of that which imme- 
diately preceded it. The warriors, the statesmen, the artists 
and the thinkers of j^ast ages appear childish bunglers when 
compared with these broad-minded, clear-sighted, intellectual 
and practical giants of our time. The almost miraculous 
development of the industries and comprehensive activities of 
recent years, the means b}'- which distance and other obstacles 
have been deprived of their power to separate men and keep 
them in ignorance of each other, all come, directly or indi- 



30 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

rectly, from scientific discoveries. So useful has science 
become to practical life that it has l)een made, to a great 
extent, the general superintendent of the business undertak- 
ings, of the social and political aftairs, and of the thought of 
the world. If it has too lately received that high position to 
have banished false principles and injurious violation of the 
laws of nature, of business and of association, it is yet stead- 
ily and vigorously working toward that end, and can not well 
fail of ultimate success. 

Science has acquired this great influence by doing its work 
within its own special field with great and conscientious 
thoroughness. It will take nothing for granted, it requires 
proof; it shuns no labor to arrive at certainty, it will not 
deceive others nor itself, and declines to pronounce upon a 
theory until all the facts have been sufficiently examined and 
reasonable doubts removed. These are its fundamental prin- 
ciples. Some of its teachers, indeed, fail to be always governed 
by these principles, for they are often more or less imperfectly 
imbued with its spirit, but their influence is lost in proportion 
as they are unable to sustain their positions by convincing 
proof. Science belongs to the material world, the world of 
facts which are capable of being proved, and it has taught the 
world the carefulness in receiving such proof that it uses 
in seeking for it. 

Geology has been perfected with this painstaking care. 
Several miles of the original depth of the rocks of the earth 
have been turned up to the light of day by the immense forces 
that assisted in its structure, and they have laid bare, some- 
where, nearly every leaf of its journal of its own life and history. 
By long and patient study its alphabet has been learned and 
the strange journal read. Chemistry, Zoology, Botany, Physi- 
ology, Astronomy, and many other sciences have aided in its 
work, for they are all branches of one great Science of 
Nature. As the special energies of each department of nature 
had their part in making the earth, so the facts of each science 



THE DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE. 31 

now assist in explaining liow it was made. Not everything is 
known. On the contrary, stndy seems only now to have fairly 
commenced. It has surveyed the general field, it has disci- 
plined its workers, organized its forces, and found out the right 
way to use them. It has exercised its eye, its hand and its 
judgment so thoroughly that they can work together with 
great rapidity and certainty. 

It has learned that nature is not a confused collection of con- 
tradictions, but that the different parts form a consistent, well- 
proportioned and harmonious whole; that the laws now con- 
trollhig its operations are universal, that they always and every- 
where produce the same effect under the same circumstances. 
This unity of nature enables science to transport its students 
to distant times and far away regions of the universe. The 
laws of proportion in the animal frame are so well known that, 
with a few bones, it can reconstruct the whole animal, discover 
its habits and the circumstances that surrounded it while liv- 
ing. The chemical constitution of the rocks and the animal 
or vegetable remains found in them, or absent from them, re- 
veal the condition of the seas and the land during the period 
from which they date. Thus science walks back and forth 
through the long ages of the past, and studies each period, each 
class of vegetable or animal life and the operation of the forces 
that produced it, with even more ease and certainty than a 
traveler can study a country and its productions, as they stand 
in all their completeness before his eyes, at the present day. 
In some respects the observer can get nearer to the secrets of 
the past than those of the present. Here he can not always 
go behind the curtain, but there the curtain is drawn, and 
he has a closer view of causes. 

Science sometimes meets with agents and methods of study 
that make the most important and wonderful revelations. For 
instance, light, as reflected by different objects, was found to 
make various revelations as to the nature of those objects, and 
by this means a multitude of facts in regard to the constitu- 



32 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

tion and condition of the sun, and other distant bodies, were 
very positively made out. So much clear and precise knowl- 
edge has been gained in the last fifty years, that it would be 
presumptuous to undertake to mark the future boundaries 
between the known and the unknown, or perhaps to say that 
any subject awakening the interest and curiosity of men will 
not be sufliciently investigated and cleared up to fully satisfy 
that curiosity. 

The outlines of what science has revealed of the past of one 
of the most important regions of the earth, are given in the 
First Part of this work. So far as we can discover all the la- 
bors of nature are directed toward an ultimate end in connection 
with man. The Mississippi Yalley seems to have been formed 
with peculiar care on a broad and simple plan and to have 
been supplied with a variety, abundance and excellence of 
useful materials seen nowhere else in the world. 

It can not but be of interest to note how and when the 
original plan of the great Yalley was drawn, and how the 
operations that stored it with so many treasures were con- 
ducted. Science is able to give a very clear and connected 
history of this long process, and also to furnish a most inter- 
esting tale of an ancient and mysterious people of whom 
written history knows almost nothing, or at least nothing 
definite. The facts and the manner in which they have been 
studied and their meaning learned are contained in a multi- 
tude of books. The details must be sought in those. It is 
only the general conclusions that are here given. 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW NATURE F0RMP:D THE GREAT VALLEY. 

The Book accepted as a Divine Record and Revelation by 
the Jews, and afterwards by Christians, opens with a brief and 
partial outline of the origin of the earth and its progressive 
fitting up for the use and residence of man. Nature itself 
must be a revelation, if its narrative can be read, and the two 
records should be in harmony. The Bible account contains 
a very brief summary, and leaves wide gaps in the outline — 
touching but few points. Naturally it w^ould not be fully 
comprehended until the outline was completed and explained 
by a multitude of details. This was the task of science, and 
the more definite and unmistakable its conclusions become, 
the more decisive appears the agreement between the two 
records. 

The Bible commences with " the beginning," when the 
elements, which came ultimately to their present state, were 
formless, confused, and utterly "dark;" confines its state- 
ments concerning the early periods chiefly to the origin and 
development of light, to the gradual introduction of plants 
and animals, and, finally, of man. Science commences with 
an examination of the finished work — with the earth as it is 
now — and follows the process back, step by step, to the time 
when no life existed, and when it first became possible for the 
earth to be illuminated as it is now. It confirms, explains and 
fills up the Bible outline so far as it can reach positive conclu- 
sions. It discovers evidences of a heated state in which rocks 
and metals were melted, or existed only in the form of gas or 
vapor, through which the light of the sun could not pene- 
trate. The earth gradually cooled, a crust formed over the 
3 33 



34 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

molten mass, the vapors condensed and fell to the surface as 
water, and minerals diffused in it, much of which last at 
length became solid, leaving the atmosphere as a transparent 
gas through which the bright sunshine fell on the solid sur- 
face, or the waters, and in which a portion of the water, 
whenever turned to vapor by heat, floated as clouds, became 
condensed and fell in the form of rain. 

Astronomy and chemistiy aid us to go back a step beyond 
even this state of fusion, and confirm the Bible statement that 
the earth was ''without form and void, and darkness was upon 
the face of the deep;" when progress commenced by "move- 
ment," or motion, communicated by some power to the dif- 
fused elements of matter. Men of science see reason to con- 
clude that the material of the solid mass of the earth, as well 
as its liquid and gaseous parts, existed then as thin vapor, the 
particles of matter being widely separated, thinner and lighter 
than air, and cold and lifeless^ so to speak, because they were 
not near enough to act and react on each other. To introduce 
this action they must be' condensed — brought into contact. 
When this was done great activity commenced, producing an 
immense development of heat accompanied by " light." In 
this state of lively action particles of the same kind sought 
each other, came together, or condensed^ ultimately hardened, 
and a direct process of fitting up the surface for man com- 
menced. 

So far, therefore, as the two records touch on the same 
points they mutually confirm each other; the order in which 
organized living things were introduced in later times being 
substantially the same in each. The Bible narrative is incom- 
plete, yet remarkably exact as far as it goes. The word " day," 
in the sacred narrative, which has perplexed so many and 
formerly caused the conclusions of science to be looked upon 
with suspicion, is used in several senses in that narrative 
itself, and is now commonly regarded as presenting no obsta- 
cle to the harmony of the two records. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE EARTH. 35 

It is, therefore, believed tliat the whole planetary system 
was, at first, one vast mass of vapor, which, gradually con- 
tracting as it revolved, threw oflp successive rings which col- 
lected in separate masses and condensed independently — the 
process of condensation being more rapid in proportion as the 
masses were smaller. The vast central mass — the sun — still 
remains in the condition in which the earth once was — a ball 
of glowing fire — the other planets being in the various stages 
of progress according to their size and rate of motion. This 
is a theory long since entertained, and, though doubted hy 
some or considered not fully proved, it seems to be confirmed 
in various ways by the researches of science. 

Heat is latent, or unperceived, in vapor. It is developed 
by motion — it is said to be nmode of motion — and it appears 
to be connected with all the vast activities that have made 
the earth what it is. The most violent motion produced, or 
was accompanied by, the greatest displays of heat. When 
the boiling matter of the earth began to part with its heat, 
it contracted so as to occupy less space. It boiled down, 
so to speak, the lighter and the heavier elements separated, the 
gases and the vapors that were to form the atmosphere and 
the waters — or to be gradually returned as solids at a later 
period — became the envelope of the heavier pasty mass at 
the center. 

Thus the central mass thickened, shrunk, as it parted with its 
heat, until a scum or crust formed at the surface. At first this 
crust was too hot to allow the vapor to condense into water but 
it continued to thicken and cool until a universal sea covered 
it. The waters were at first hot and saturated with corrosive 
minerals, which eat into and wore down the surface of the 
hardened rock, so that this was finally buried under a thick 
layerof these minute fragments. These fragments gradually 
consolidated and formed the first or azoic rock — which con- 
tained no sign of life — that was raised out of the waters. It 
was this which, pulverized by the atmosphere, the rain or the 



36 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

waves, furnished material for the layers of rock formed in 
later ages. Each age left in the rocks formed in it some traces 
of its plant and animal life. 

It would seem that, by the operation of some law as yet 
unknown, the surfaces where the continents were to be, har- 
dened first, and the lines that were to separate the future con- 
tinent and ocean were drawn at the very beginning. The 
study of coast lines, of mountain chains and their various 
ages, with, the forces that must have raised them, proves a 
steady operation of influences in the same direction from the 
beginning, and renders it quite improbable that the continents 
and ocean beds have really ever changed places to any great 
extent. The continents and their immense ranges of moun- 
tains were steadily lifted (or prepared to be raised) while the 
ocean beds were as steadily depressed until late in geological 
times. Apparently this result was largely due to the stiffen- 
intr of the crust over the continental areas first. The melted 
rock contracted eight to twelve per cent in volume as it 
cooled and became immovable ; that which cooled last would 
lie lower and be thinner and more yielding at any given 
period ; and as the mass beneath cooled it shrunk, and the 
crust must settle to find support. As it settled to the smaller 
dimensions of this shrinking ball the crust must wrinkle and 
fold and produce the mountain systems and continental 
plateaus of the earth. As the sea bottoms lay lower and 
yielded to the descending movement most readily (being 
&<^^)mewhat thinner because later formed) they must find room 
by pressing obliquely up against the borders of the continents, 
thereby tending to raise them as a whole, as well as to fold 
them, in places, into mountain chains. 

Accordingly, mountains are usually found not far from the 
border of the continents, are steepest on the sides which front 
the sea, from which the strongest lifting pressure came, and 
it is found that the higher mountains of a continent border 
the largest ocean. In America, the Rocky Mountains border- 



THE EFFKCTS OF CONTRACTION. 37 

ing the wide Pacific have broad plateaus and high peaks, 
while those near the narrower Athmtic are more modest in 
all their proportions. The same peculiarity is observed on all 
the continents, which points to a general and uniform law of 
elevation. 

The almost inconceivable power producing this elevation is 
thus the result of the contraction which steadily follows the 
cooling of the earth, and possibly, to some extent, the chemical 
changes and the force of gravity which consolidate the ma- 
terials of the rocks so that they occupy less and less space. 
Since rocks, in cooling, lose from eight to twelve per cent in 
bulk, the surface crust was obliged by its weight to follow the 
contraction beneath. 

This process is extremely slow, and the strain produced on 
all the surface rocks by contraction seems to have had its long 
periods of accumulation during which it manifested itself by 
a slow rise and fall of the surface over the continental regions. 
In some places the changes of level were great and long con- 
tinued, in others slight but changing more often. Along the 
site of the Alleghany Mountains there was a long period of 
slow sinking. Nearly eight miles in thickness of rock was 
there formed. The character of the various layers showed 
that they were all formed not far below the surface of the 
water — the sinking and the formation of rock continuing to be 
about equal during the whole period. There were frequent 
changes in the direction of the movement over the general 
surface of the future Yalley of the Mississippi, but its range 
seems to have been small, only about 4,000 feet of rock being 
formed in the Central Valley. 

There were several periods during which this force violently 
eased itself by permanently raising some part of the crust 
high above the rest. During the first of these periods of 
permanent rising the Great Valley seems to have been 
outlined. 

Land was first made along- the northern border, and it is 



38 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

believed to have formed the oldest of all the continents. It 
stretched from Labrador southwest, along the northern rim 
of tlie Great Lakes to Minnesota, with another branch from 
Lake Superior northwest far toward the Pole. The eastern 
side of ihe Vallej next the Atlantic was then raised, and if 
land near the Pacific was not made then there was, at least, 
a sub-marine ridge, and ever thereafter the site of the Yallej 
remained enclosed, sometimes as an interior shallow sea, and 
at others as low-lying land. The surface of the Yallej was 
always the most stable part of the Continent. 

After these liftings and some efforts at making mountains 
in a comparatively small way in Canada and New England, 
there was a very long period of uneasy movement, during 
which the land slowly gained on the water along the northern 
and eastern border of the Valley; but no great or extensive 
elevations were made. All the rocks and minerals of the 
Northern and Central Valley east of the Mississippi were 
made during this time, which was followed by a great display 
of force. The Alleghany Mountains were raised, and with 
them probably more than half, possibly two thirds, of the 
Valley became permanently dry land. This was a far greater 
display of force than any foi-mer elevation, and it is believed 
by some that the AUeghanies made the first great mountain 
chain raised on any continent. 

Much of the surface of the Gulf States was still under water 
and an arm of the sea, or a channel some hundreds of miles 
wide, lay between the Missouri River and the site of the 
future Pocky Mountains. Another period of comparative 
quiet followed; but still greater forces were gathering, and 
finally, in the early part of modern geological time, made the 
grandest show of power the history of the earth can present. 
The long chain of the Rocky and Andes Mountains was 
raised, during which period of elevation a region of the con- 
tinent a thousand miles wide was lifted into high plateaus, 
which served as a basis for many lofty mountain ranges. The 



RAISING OF CONTINENTS AND MCJUNTAINS. 39 

western and soutliern parts of the Valley were raised at the 
same time. All the highest ])lateans and loftiest mountain 
ranges of other continents also date from tliis period. All 
this was accompanied with fearful earthquakes, with immense 
activity in volcanoes and the gushing forth of vast quantities 
of lava from long clefts in the rocks which must have been 
many miles deep. 

This seemed to have been the great and, in some degree, 
definite adjustment of the surface of the earth to what lay 
beneath it. Apparently the surface, or crust of the earth, had 
become extremely thick and solid, and the former elevations 
of land and mountains had only partially relieved the strain, 
which continued to accumulate while the thickness and 
solidity of the crust also increased, until the pent-up giant 
force could only be relieved by these vast elevations. 

There were frequent changes of level over wide regions in 
later times and there is much local movement to this day ; 
but it appears to be chiefly a temporary shifting of level with- 
out any great world-wide or very permanent changes. What 
is the present condition of the interior of the earth, is a 
question on which geologists are not fully agreed. To settle 
it requires a comprehensiveness of knowledge not yet acquired. 
Many of the most eminent authorities consider it jirobable that 
pressure has so far overcome the expansive force of heat that 
the center of the glowing mass is solid and that a fluid mass 
lies between it and the surface crust. The mysterious be- 
havior of magnetic forces has suggested that as an explana- 
tion. Others suppose that there has never been such a sea of 
molten fire beneath the cold crust as has been described; that 
pressure and the cooling process hardened the surface and the 
interior at the same time. 

This view allows the same degree of heat in the interior but 
contends that it did not prevent the solidifying process. The 
heat has always been escaping — ascending from below through 
the colder rocks — and the surface changes — sinking of ocean- 



40 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

beds, raising of continents and mountains, and other displays 
of immense force — are due to the unequal contraction of the 
coolino- rocks lying below those already cooled, and to the 
unequal qualities of the surface rocks as conductors of heat. 
This leaves the same horizontal strain in the surface rocks, 
and the way in which the force is applied to produce the 
great elevations and constant movements noticed is explained 
with much plausibility. 

It is, however, a recent theory, requires mature considera- 
tion, and is not yet received by the exceedingly respectable 
authorities here followed. Still, it may prove to be true. 
The earth, as a whole, has been proved to be more than twice 
as heavy as the weight of its surface rocks would make it, 
so that extreme density for the interior or a vastly heavier 
substance must be supposed. It is still an open question how 
this is to be explained, and it was one of the chief reasons 
for the acceptance by some of the solid' theory. To accept 
it would vary the explanation of continent outlining and 
mountain making, but would not demand any other change. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW ROCKS ARE MADE AND HOW THEIR " STORY " IS READ. 

We have seen that, amidst all the seeming confusion of the 
earth in its earlier periods, an orderly and measured progress 
appears to have ruled from the first. Motion produced 
notable changes and change was controlled and guided to- 
wards certain definite ends. The materials that came finally 
together to produce the earth, as we now see it, were all 
scattered over an unspeakably vast space as vapor or " star 
dust." Examples of that state of things are believed to 
exist still in the Universe by astronomers. They are called 
Nebulse. 

By some means movement was commenced among these 
thinly diffused particles of matter — they attracted and repelled 
each other; from this proceeded heat. Particles of the same 
kind attracted each other most strongly and produced separa- 
tion and concentration, and progress was commenced. This 
continued until the highest degree of heat was produced and 
then concentration was carried forward by the process of 
cooling until the separation of the mass of heavier material 
from the lighter, by the formation of a crust, made another 
long step forward. These lighter materials took the form of 
air and water; the water fell to the surface or floated as vapor 
in the air, and these two, assisted by powerful chemical 
agents and the vast forces we considered in the previous 
chapter, commenced the work of reconstructing the surface 
material of the hard-crust — that is, began a new process of 
rock making. 

At first chemical and mechanical forces worked alone. 
After a time another agent appeared — the Life Force. This 

41 



42 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

busy and intelligent workman was a remarkably .skillful 
chemist and builder, varied the style and the aims of its 
work according to circumstances, and so distinctly different 
are the forms it produced in each period that the geologist 
uses them as a guide in his researches. 

The position of the rocks and some of their more general, as 
well as peculiar, features show in what age they were made. 
But these characteristics are not always present or may not 
always be distinct enough to make them reliable as a guide. So 
many changes have occurred that nowhere in the world do the 
entire series of rocks lie in regular succession one above the 
other. When any part of the crust of the earth was raised 
out of the water no rock was formed, and sometimes, while so 
raised, many layers already formed were in part or in whole 
washed away. Then the same surface was often sunk under 
water again and another series was formed of a later period,, 
leaving a vast break in the series at that point. Sometimes 
they were so disturbed by elevating forces that it would be 
difficult to tell where they belonged but for the animal or 
vegetable remains in them. 

A careful study of these remains reveals the remarkable 
fact that some classes of animals are wholly confined to 
certain sei-ies of rocks, and that the varying tribes, families 
and species of these classes are limited to particular layers in 
the series formed during a certain period. These remains, 
therefore, are a most important aid in classifying rocks. The 
life force, as has been said, varies the forms according to the 
condition of the climate, of the air and the water, and a thou- 
sand local or general circumstances. These indications, joined 
with the chemical structure of the rocks, the special materials 
of which they are couiposed, the marks of mechanical force 
which they bear and their position, furnish the alphabet of 
the language in which they tell their story. 

It is a language that requires to be learned by study and 
pains; but when once mastered it is very clear and definite in 



THE FOUR CLASSES OF ROCKS. 43 

conveying information. It is the most reliable of histories, 
for it is the record made by the events themselves as they 
passed. It is the phonograph of the long ages before there 
was a human observer, repeating the story of its own times 
to ns mneh more exactly than sncli an ol)server could have 
learned it. 

This story is told in four different volumes; that is to say, 
there are four periods and four classes of rocks called Azoic, 
Falieozoic, Mcsozoic, and Cenozoic. These are Greek terms : 
Azoic meaning without life,' Pahieozoic, ancient life; Meso- 
zoic. mediwcal or middle life, aiid Cenozoic, recent life. 
The Azoic rocks contain no traces of life; tlie Palaeozoic rocks, 
lying above the first, inclose the oldest remains of life that 
have been preserved ; the Mesozoic rocks rest above the 
Palaeozoic, and contain remains of plants and animals more 
like those which now exist; and the Cenozoic rocks, lying 
highest of all, except when they have been thrown out of 
place by elevating or disturbing forces, contain recent forms 
of life or which bear a close resemblance to tliose now ex- 
isting. 

The igneous rocks (ignis is Latin for fire) — those which 
cooled after having been melted — lie at the bottom under- 
neath all the rest, except in cases where they have been thrown 
out of volcanoes, or have otherwise burst up and overflowed 
the surface through breaks in the crust, both which cases have 
been very numerous. Sometimes the rocks originally lying 
above them have been thrown off" in mountain-making or have 
been quite worn away by the atmosphere, rains, and ice. 
These forces have always been actively at work crumbling 
away the elevated surfaces of the land and carrying away frag- 
ments and fine material in blocks, pebbles, sand, and mud, to 
form new layers in the waters. These layers form " aqueous 
rocks " (aqua is Latin for water). 

All the four classes above-mentioned differ from the igneous 
rocks. They are the finely worn material of the igneous, or of 



4i ' THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

other aqueous, rocks spread in horizontal layers at the bottom 
of water, yet sometimes made wholly or partly of the broken, 
or finely ground, remains of organic forms, or sometimes 
formed by direct chemical action. 

The Azoic rocks show that there was a long time after the 
waters covered the surface, during which there was too much 
heat, and probably, also, too strong infusions of chemical sub- 
stances unfriendly to life to permit its introduction. The 
rocks of that period were deeply affected by heat, sometimes 
rendering it difficult to tell that they were ever stratified or 
formed of successive layers, as is the case with all aqueous 
rocks. It is believed that a deep layer of this primitive rock 
was spread over all regions before any land was raised out of 
the universal sea. Then contraction displayed its forces in 
niakino- the first land, the waters must have cooled, while the 
chemical substances in them diminished, being deposited as 
rock. 

Arrived at this point, seaweeds and the first animals ap- 
peared in the waters, vast beds of iron and copper were formed, 
and Palaeozoic time had begun. The waters were soon alive 
with animals. One of the principal uses of the shell fish, so 
extremely abundant at this time, was to form limestone after 
their death from the stony covering in which they inclosed 
themselves in life. It was a very long period. Slowly the 
surface of the Valley rose and fell. After each change differ- 
ent classes of rocks were formed, difterent species of animals 
flourished in the waters aiid different varieties of plants ap 
peared ^n the land. 

No land animals are known to have existed then, and it was 
only in the latter part of this period that fishes appeared in 
the seas. Nature makes her great changes very slowly. So 
quietly were the elevations and depressions of the central 
Yalley made that the rocks there were but little displaced or 
bent, and the sinking along the site of the Alleghany moun- 
tains was so slow that the formation of rock could keep pace 



THE (Lost: of amciext timk. 45 

with it ; and when, at the close of tliis k^ng period, these 
mountains were raised, it was so long in the doing that an 
eminent authority says, " motion by the few inches (or, at 
most, a few feet) a century accords best with the facts." 

Nearly all the rock-making of the region east of the Mis- 
sissippi River from the upper part of the Gulf States except 
the immediate vicinity of the river below the mouth of the 
Ohio, and pei'haps all of Minnesota, Iowa and Northern Mis- 
souri, was done in this ancient time. On the nortliern and 
especially the eastern sides a large part of the material for 
rocks was obtained from the lands where other rocks were 
worn down and carried as mud, sand and pebbles to the sea; 
but in the quiet interior the rocks were chiefly limestone 
formed from the shells of its immense swarms of animals. 

Toward the close of this period the sea seems to have been 
largely shut out. Tlie general surface Lay very near the level 
of the water and vegetable life, for the first time, predomi- 
nated. When avast amount of forest growth had been gath- 
ered, the surface sunk beneath the waters and the vegetable 
material was buried beneath mud and other rock-making 
material. A rise then occurred bringing the surface to its 
former position, the forest growth again springing up to be 
again buried, and so on many times in succession, each time 
furnishing material for a layer of coal. After a period of 
i-est which allowed this to consolidate, the first great moun- 
tain-making period closed Ancient, or Palaeozoic time. Only 
the surface of the upper and eastern Yalley was afterwards 
modified or received additional material. 

During Mesozoic time much, though not all, of the remain- 
der of the Yalley was filled out. In Texas there was a shallow 
sea, and a great thickness of limestone formed, while in the 
waters of the upper part of the Gulf StStes — which took in some 
of Tennessee and much of Mississippi and Alabama — there was 
probably a greater depth in which the chalk and flint forma- 
tion was laid from shells of minute animals, and sandstones 



46 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

were formed from the material washed down from the lands 
to the north. What was done during this time in the broad 
channel between the Missouri River and the site of the moun- 
tains on the west is not so well known except in Nebraska and 
near the Black Hills where the rocks of the period are rich in 
the remains of the life of that time. Toward the close of the 
Mesozoic, the symptoms of the coming vast elevations of the 
great Mountain-making Era began to appear by the elevation 
of the sea-bottom near to, or just above, the surface of the 
water and much coal was made, in places, amounting to about 
fifteen thousand square miles in the Western Yalley. 

There was a very great change in animal and vegetable life, 
which shows that the climate and the general conditions on 
which the development of life forms largely depends were 
very much altered during the coal and mountain-making 
periods which closed ancient time. It was a transition from 
the Old to the l^ew and closed with the supreme display of 
force which produced the largest mountain and high plateau 
systems of all the continents. 

This elevation was not wholly completed until Cenozoic or 
recent time, during the first part of which the low lands bor- 
dering the Gulf were completed to about their present extent. 
The western plains in the Yalley, which continued for awhile 
to be a region of marshes and fresh water lakes, were then 
filled up and elevated. 

This substantially completed the structural work of the 
Yalley and of the continent, and introduced the general con- 
ditions of climate which still exist. With all the great 
changes which occurred on three of its borders, the Yalley 
itself was a generally quiet region, even the elevation of the 
mountains, in which it shared, disturbing its rocks but 
slightly. Yet, slight as^they were, these disturbances were of 
great importance. They produced a displacement, for in- 
stance, across Illinois, Northeastern Iowa and Southwestern 
Indiana crossing the Ohio Kiver at Louisville, giving access 



DISTUKBANCES IN THE VALLEY. 47 

to the strata laid in what had been, for the inoet ])art, the 
quietest region of the northern valley. Nature thus opened 
the book for science to read and, at the same time, accom- 
plished various other important ends. These uplifts, when 
they broke and turned up the edges of the rocks, produced 
a great amount of heat, and the quality of the coal beds pre- 
viously formed there was much improved thereby. The vari- 
ous layers of rock were also hardened and rendered more 
valuable as building material and the drainage was more or 
less improved. 

Parts of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas 
shared in these disturbances, during which nature took occa- 
sion to distribute some of the most valuable minerals where 
they would exert a powerful influence on the welfare of its 
future inhabitants. Wishing to render the central point at- 
tractive and valuable for historical and industrial purposes, 
she took much pains to enrich Missouri with minerals and to 
supply Illinois with a good quality of coal with which to 
work them at the least expense. 

Thus all the rocks were formed with a variety of intelligent 
and benevolent purposes in view. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW NATURE FINISHED THE VALLEY AND PREPAEED IT FOR MAN^ 

The last part of the middle period, or Mesozoic time, and 
the hrst part of the recent period were occupied in the pro- 
duction of the vast mountain systems which left the continents 
at their present elevation, and with the same general relations 
to the seas and to each other as now. The division between 
the middle and recent times is made at the point where the 
forms of life that still exist began to appear in the rocks, 
Cenozinc time is divided by geologists into two parts, the first 
called the Tertiary, the second and last, which includes the 
present, the Quaternary. 

The Tertiary is divided into three parts, according to the 
abundance of the species of life forms that still exist. The 
last of these is called the Pliocene, which means " more recent." 
A large proportion of the species of plants and animals found 
preserved in its rocks still remain. The next before it, and 
further back from us in time, is called Miocene, meaning " less 
recent.'' The first era of the Tertiary is called the Eocene, which 
means " the dawn of the recent." There are rocks of all these 
periods in the western and southern Yalley, for the full out- 
lines of those sections were not gained until the mountains 
and plateaus had reached their present elevation. 

The gains of land in the Valley were not remarkably large 
in any of these three eras, for tlie general surface was already 
above the reach of the sea, but the rocks of those times that 
toere made are of very great interest. They were chiefly fresh 
water formations from the Black Hills southward, and east- 
ward from the base of the Rocky Mountains, and contain a 
very interesting class of fossil forms of the land animals of 

48 



THE PLAINS DURING THE TEKTIAKY. 49 

the three eras immediately preceding the age of ice and the 
appearance of man. A part of Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, 
and portions of the territories bordering them on the west and 
soutii formed a lake region all through the Tertiary, or at least 
through the most of it. It was then a region of unstable 
level, very much like the eastern Valley during the age of 
coahinaking, and the results were similar, for some 15,000 
square miles of that region have beds of workable coal, which 
date from these deposits. 

There is much that is extremely interesting in these coals 
and rocks besides the animal remains they inclose. Much 
of the coal is only partially reduced. It is called lignite, or 
woody coal, for the structure of the wood is often very evi- 
dent and it has not all the density of true coal, nor its value 
for all purposes. The rocks are also less compact, in general, 
though in some situations, and when chemical conditions were 
favorable, very solid and firm building stone is found. Yet, 
the surface deposits were generally soft and loose, they did 
not have time to consolidate, and, being mostly formed in 
fresh water, which had less of chemical substances to unite 
and compact the materials, it was left comparatively friable. 

For this reason the surface rocks were very heavily worn 
down and washed away in later periods, leaving deep river 
beds and here and there isolated embankments, pyramids, and 
figures of strange and fanciful shapes — the remains of the 
original layers. These sometimes very much resemble monu- 
ments of human labor, yet are always distinguishable by 
being stratified. Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado furnish 
much curious and interesting scenery varied and beautified by 
this means. The strata of Tertiary times in the lower Valley 
were not washed and worn as much as on the plains and, for 
the most part, were more suddenly raised out of the sea. 

The climate of this period was warm-temperate — very much 
like that of the southern Valley at the present day. Vegeta- 
tion was therefore luxuriant and animal life abundant. With 
4 



-^ 



60 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the close of the Tertiary the Yalley was fairly complete in its 
outlines, in its general provision of metals and coal, and in 
the rocks suitable for the purposes of the future. When these 
should be sufficiently pulverized they would furnish elements 
of inexhaustible fertility to the soil. 

The iinal processes that were to give to this broad region its 
crowning value for man were reserved to the last part of 
Cenozoic time, called the Quaternary j)eriod. In a region 
where the rocks next the surface are Azoic, or where they are of 
igneous origin, the soil is thin and of moderate fertility, often 
barren. Even if those parts of it which are crumbled by the 
atmosphere and frost are not washed away they do not con- 
tain the variety of elements necessary to an abundant vegeta- 
tion; the soil is not deep enough to retain the necessary 
moisture, or it is too compact and clings too closely to the 
underlying rock to be sufficiently drained. It was necessary 
to provide against these disadvantages in the Valley. This was 
accomplished during the three epochs of the Quaternary. 

These three eras are called the Glacial period, the Champlain 
period and the Terrace period. The last includes the time 
that is now passing. The causes of the Glacial period, or the 
Age of Ice, are not clearly understood — at least geologists are 
not agreed upon them — and various theories have been sug- 
gested, none of which seem to be entirely satisfactory. Some 
attribute it to astronomical influences. The orbit of the earth 
slowly varies during a long period and then returns to its 
original state. When it was most elliptical, and carried the 
earth furthest away from the sun in one part of its track, the 
Glacial era is supposed to have occurred. Some scientific men 
of great eminence favor this view. Changes in the amount 
of heat furnished by the sun, changes in the sea bottom 
of regions near the equator, or the sinking of the isthmus con- 
necting the two parts of the American Continent, have been 
appealed to, as also change^' in the atmosphere. 

Studies on these theories are not sufficiently mature to 



THE AGE OF ICE AND ITS SERVICES. 51 

determine what may be tlieir real value as yet. It seems 
fairly certain that after the vast mountain elevations ceasing 
before the end of the Tertiary period the northern parts of the 
continents were considerably raised as a wliole. It is thought 
that Behrings Straits were closed, and that the sea bottom of 
the Northern Atlantic was raised so that Europe and North 
America were connected for a time. This would shut out the 
warm ocean currents from the Arctic regions, and, joined with 
the general elevation, might account for the vast sheet of 
mingled ice, snow and water that slowly moved down to the 
central Yalley. Such a condition of thiugs now exists in 
Greenland, and the evidences of its former state, from the 
eastern part of New England to the Rocky Mountains, are 
very numerous and positive. 

The flow of ice descended to the Ohio River or its vicinity. 
The softer rocks on the northern rim of tlie Valley were 
ground very line, while great boulders, or blocks, of the harder 
rocks were broken off, imbedded in the ice, and brought far 
down the Valley with immense quantities of smaller frag- 
ments, pebbles and coarse gravel. The depressions of the 
Great Lakes are believed to liave been made at first by vol- 
canic action in early times, to have been nearly filled by a 
deposit of softer rock in the slow progress of Palaeozoic and 
Mesozoic times which was scooped out and crushed by this 
resistless shovel and mill, and carried down into the Valley. 

After this crushing process had accumulated the mass of 
"drift," as this loose material is called, at the lower extremity 
of the great glacier, the northern regions slowly sank again, 
continuing that process far below the present level, when it 
ceased and a rise again commenced. When the elevation that 
is supposed to have brought on this Age of Ice ceased and 
the sinking commenced, the climate began to grow warmer, 
the ice melted, the glaciei-s retreated to the neighl)orhood of 
the pole, and the Champlain Era began. 

During this time the melting of the ice and the lower level 



62 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

of the northern Valley flooded much or all of it, and the dis- 
tribution of the drift was etfected. There were rushing cur- 
rents that carried everything movable before them. The 
pebbles and heavier material naturally tbund the lowest place 
at the bottom of the drift. As the force of the currents 
diminished, the lighter and finer material was spread over the 
mass of loose stone, sometimes in very deep embankments 
of mud, and in the broad lakes and still waters of the period 
the silt containing the largest amount of material required 
for a rich, deep soil was slowly deposited. 

This continued for some time after the rise had again com- 
menced. When this rise had drained oif most of the region 
the wearing down of the present river channels began. The 
vast amount of water to be drained off made very large streams, 
which may now be estimated in the distances from bluflf to 
bluff on each side of the river bottoms, for originally the 
Valleys did not exist, the whole surface being very nearly, or 
quite, even and all the deep cuts of the valleys (probably 
where still more ancient river beds had been) were worn out 
by the streams. Sometimes the gradual rise of the general 
surface, which caused this powerful wearing down of the 
channels, was stopped for a while and the shore line formed 
a terrace or bench. This is called the Terrace epoch. 

The Champlain Era, during which the drift was chiefly dis- 
tributed, was so called because its effects are very marked in 
the region of that lake, and it was first carefully studied there. 
The Glacial, Champlain and Terrace Eras were parts of the one 
great and important period which gave the Valley its pre- 
eminence as an agricultural region. The first provided the 
material for a deep undersoil, the second spread it out sys- 
tematically, so that the whole region should get the benefit 
' of it, laid the coarse material beneath so as to form a natural 
drain, and held the lighter and richer materials in solution in 
the waters until they could be laid on the top. 

The level prairies were the sites of shallow lakes which 



ORIGIN OF PRAIRIE SUBSOILS. 53 

finally became marshes in most cases ; the rolling prairies 
testify to the rush and recoil of the shallow fresh-water seas 
that followed the melting of the ice; and the ravines, the hills, 
and the smaller valleys indicate the washing away of portions 
of the surface in the process of draining. The plains, that 
gradually rise from the Missouri River, and from about the 
western boundary of the State of Missouri until, at the foot 
of the mountains, nearly 600 miles distant, they are 5,000 feet 
above the level of the sea, washed very heavily and sent much 
of the material at the surface to be distributed in the cen- 
tral Valley, or to fill up the basin of the lower Mississippi. 

This material along the rivers is a purer and heavier deposit 
than is generally found elsewhere. Old river beds existed 
here before the age of ice, and the finest and best material 
naturally flowed toward these lowest levels. When the level 
of the land was so near that of the water as to render the 
currents light, very thick deposits were made. Sometimes the 
current would be stopped by an obstruction in the channel 
and then a wide-spreading lake would be formed, and so 
heavily were the waters laden with earthy matter that in time 
the whole lake would, perhaps, be filled with it. Nearly a 
third part of Iowa — the western part — the eastern part of 
Nebraska, with some portions of Kansas and Missouri, were 
covered by such a vast lake filled with this " Bluff Formation " 
or "Loess," as it is called, and vast quantities of it were used 
to fill up the lower Valley of the Mississippi River. It is 
still being deposited at its various mouths, and making land 
into the Gulf. 

These surface deposits contain much loam and chemical 
material required in vegetable growth, and to it are due the 
remarkable and dural)le qualities of the immediate undersoil. 
As soon as the water was drawn off or became sufiiciently 
shallow, a rich vegetation sprung up and the marshes were 
filled, in the course of time, with a vegetable mold of great 
depth, and it accumulated over all the surface of the higher 



54 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ground, thougli it was frequently washed down from the 
knolls and hills to lower surfaces. Unnumbered years of this 
growth and decay of plants and grasses on the prairies and 
fall of leaves in the forests collected a vast reserve of decayed 
organic remains, or vegetable mold, which put it in the best 
possible condition for the husbandman. Nature took abund- 
ance of time to fertilize the Valley and the civilized farmer 
found it the richest garden. The Animal Kingdom lent its 
aid to the Vegetable in this furnishing process. The vast 
mastodon, herds of buftalo and deer, and countless other ani- 
mals, large and small, fed on its herbage and were "herded " 
there from birth to death. Thus was the work of preparing 
this favored region for its human occupant completed. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 

The mysterious force we call Life is a wonderful and most 
intelligent Architect. All the resources of chemistry are 
at its command, and the best trained skill of science fails 
to reproduce its results, even with the same materials used 
in the same proportions. The usual laws and qualities of 
the matter it employs as building material bow to it as their 
master, being suspended in its presence, or adapting their 
action to its purposes ; and, armed with such authority, 
this invisible intelligence raises matter to a higher level of 
powers and uses with an unerring certainty and cunning 
skill wonderful to behold. In its hands dead matter 
becomes alive. It shows inexhaustible ingenuity in varying 
the form and details of different structures. Xow it works 
them out with exquisite finish of detail, but so minute 
that many thousands may dwell together in a single drop 
of water with roomy ease, and again builds the ponderous 
elephant or whale, the tiny plant, the coarse shrub, or the 
mighty tree. The powers conferred on these works of its 
hand are equally various and wonderful. This plant pro- 
duces a virulent poison, that a delicate perfume, the other 
a nourishing fruit. There is an endless display of different 
forms, qualities, and uses, which it is the office of the science 
of Botany among plants, and of Zoology among animals, 
to investigate, and the fields are so large that, after hun- 
dreds of years of study by enthusiastic learners, they are 
explored only in part. 

The animal world is higlier in the scale, more varied in 

55 



56 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

form, in qualities, and in uses, to which its instincts and dis- 
positions exactly correspond. Fierceness and courage go with 
powerful weapons of attack, while to weakness and timidity 
are joined strong defences, swiftness in flight or cunning arts 
of evasion. Each living thing exists for some sufficient reason 
or purpose, and every individual form of life is the intelligent 
development of a thought which it would require a volume 
to present in full detail. 

This skillful and magic builder has been unwearied in labor. 
Ever since the seas were cooled and the surface rock pul- 
verized, so as to furnish the necessary material for its opera- 
tions, the products of its activity have been innumerable, with 
a constant variation of species of the same order or addition 
of different classes. Twenty thousand species from the 
Palaeozoic rocks have been described, and these are proliably 
but a small part of the number then existing; and so numerous 
were the individuals that the defensive armor or stony frame- 
w^ork of some classes of them has, after their death, been formed 
into rocks of vast extent and hundreds of feet in thickness. 

But various as are the forms which tlie life force produces 
its mode of operating is at first uniform. Its building process 
is commenced with a cell of softor plastic matter which seems 
to understand perfectly what it is to produce, what materials 
are required, and how they are to be handled. A call is 
issued for material which passes through the wall of the cell 
and presents itself with obedient readiness. It is dissolved, 
re-combined, and laid in place. The cell expands, is divided, 
and the same process continued in each cell until the proper 
dimensions have been reached in every direction, and the 
necessary form and consistence has been given to every part 
of the organism; different materials or different combinations 
of the same material often being employed in different parts. 
Each part is endowed with the capacltv to perform its appro- 
priate work in the general result to be accomplished by the 
complete living thing in which it is placed. A multitude 



TRANSMISSION AND VARIATION. 57 

of organs work to a common end with infallible accuracy 
and harmony. 

When each form reaches maturity, and the full development 
and power it was designed to receive within and without is 
gained, a part of its energies are employed in the work of 
preparing for a successor, or a multitude of successors, of its 
own form and kind — the germ of a new individual which 
shall reach the same development and possess the same quali- 
ties is produced. Thus the life and qualities of the first of 
each race are transmitted, and the origin of all the future in- 
dividuals of its kind, however numerous or long continued 
the race may be, is provided for. 

A small range of variation between the parent and the de- 
scendant is often seen, and a change in outward circumstances 
has been found to increase variation largely. Transmission 
of qualities and form is governed by definite laws, and, by 
observing these, important changes have been brought about 
bv man in the management of the products of plants and trees, 
and in similar ways desirable qualities of domestic animals 
liave been improved. Careful and careless cultivation make 
wide differences in the quality of farm and garden produce, 
while an intelligent attention to parentage may cause a great 
gain in the value of domestic animals; but the difference has 
never been known to be so great or fundamental as to origi- 
nate in this way a wholly new animal or plant. 

Variation is observed to accumulate, however, in long 
periods of time, and it is believed by many that in the long 
duration of plant and animal existence it may account for all 
the different varieties that have ever been known — that they 
all had their remote origin in one primal being. A study of 
life through all time shows that the most perfect animals and 
plants are to be found now, and that they constantly descend 
in the scale as the observer traces them back toward their 
beginning. According to this theory the life force in the 
first animals was feeble and indeterminate; it grew stronger 



58 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and more definite as the circumstances became more favor- 
able. The variations that founded all the dift'erent classes 
arose in the long periods of time seeming to be required for 
geological changes; so that the whole vast number of species 
and their surprisingly different forms and (jualities are so 
many branches growing from one original stock. 

This is rather a theory, striving to account for the succes- 
sion of life on the earth, for the resemblances, diversities and 
gradual progress of its forms toward the ideal animal — man — 
than a proved scientific truth. The first forms of life may 
have been, and probably were, too slight in structure to be 
preserved in the early rocks, which were subjected to great 
changes by heat and chemical agents; there are various leaves 
gone from the volume of nature — at least they seem not to 
have been found, or, if found, have not been properly inter- 
preted — and observation has not yet been able to trace the 
steps of the great transformations, if they really occurred, 
with the clearness and certainty that would amount to proof. 

If the origin, relationships and progress of life are not to 
be accounted for in this way, how, then, are they to be explained ? 
It has been usual, until recently, to consider that each distinct 
species of plants and animals was specially created by the in- 
telligent Power from whose hand all things originally came, 
and that each was introduced when the circumstances were 
suitable. This, also, is without positive proof in the records 
of the earth itself. There is a class of rocks below which no 
trace of them has been found; they made their first appear- 
ance in small numbers, increasing in the later rocks, showing 
more perfect development, or, at .least, more numerous and 
perfect species, until they disappeared or reached their present 
condition. How they came the rocks do not explain, and it 
seems as great an exertion of power to confer on the Life 
Force this wonderful gift of adaptation and variation, of 
changing its mode of structure in such astonishing ways and 
bestowing such an extraordinary diversity of capabilities and 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION. 59 

qualities on its different products, as to introduce tliem by 
direct creation. 

Many experiments and careful studies Lave been made to 
ascertain if nature now contains witliin itself a power of 
spontaneous generation — of producing a germ without the 
aid of parents — but no such instance has been discovered ; 
no hint has been given that nature ever possessed such a 
power, unless the fact of the appearance of new species and 
races may be so considered. On the contrary, early races 
are often found to combine in their forms and qualities the 
peculiarities of two or more races that afterward made their 
appearance, suggesting the idea that they may have been the 
original stock from whicli distinct branches grew. A large 
number of similar facts seem to give countenance to the 
doctrine of evolution, or the gradual development of dift'erent 
species and classes from those that preceded them. 

There is certainly a law of evolution — an unfolding of 
many parts having close relationship to one stock or root — 
but it does not seem capable of explaining all the facts ob- 
served. The sudden appearance of classes widely different 
from any that had before been found is frequently noticed, 
for which evolution has no well-proved explanation; and a 
variety of similar tacts seems to indicate the operation, occa- 
sionally at least, of some other law regulating the introduc- 
tion and propagation of forms of life. 

The most interesting question of all relates to Man as an 
animal and as an all-com])rehending intelligence. In the 
general features of his bodily structure he is closely related 
to the higher animals, while in his mental and spiritual 
powers there is a world-wide difference. In one view he 
seems to be the climax of animal development; in another, he 
has a kind of faculties with a compass and power absolutely 
unparalleled in creation as we know it. 

Physically, he stands as the ultimate end, the most perfect, 
the most beautiful and noble of all the products of the Life 



60 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Force. He is the finest sample of its architectural skill, and 
is endowed with a variety and breadth of sweep of physical 
capabilities and adaptations tliat place him at the liead of the 
Systems of Life. But, by his intelligence and moral qualities 
he seems to be the significance, the end and purpose of the 
system of nature as a whole. He can combine and control 
chemical and mechanical powers so as to become superior in 
streno-th to all other forces of the organic world united. He 
is, therefore, King in the earth. He may penetrate the thought 
of which each part of nature is the embodiment, so that all 
nature is as a book made for his reading and instruction; and 
still above this quality is his range of moral powers; of dis- 
tinguishing between right and wrong; of admiring purity 
and moral beauty, and of practicing virtue. These capacities 
of control, of reflection, of combinations whose results often 
resemble creation; his power of living in the past and the 
future by a well-trained imagination, render him immeasura- 
bly superior to every other animal. 

How did he become so like and so unlike all the other 
products of the Life Force?, It is the most interesting and 
the most difiicult question which the consideration of the 
system of life suggests, and finds, as yet, no satisfactory an- 
swer in the researches of science. It is the last and deepest 
secret of the systems of nature and of life, and the key to 
them both. Science has demonstrated, very clearly, that defi- 
nite purposes and ends unite all the stages in the develop- 
ment of animate and inanimate nature. Man was evidently 
designed to be the interpreter of the whole, to conquer all its 
secrets. They will be delivered to him in due time. The sep- 
arate volumes are being carefully and successfully studied, and 
all the relations of one to the other will ultimately be apparent. 
Nature, with all its various parts and purposes, is evidently one 
and tends to one great end, which seems to be secured in the 
qualities, the powers and the destinies of its last and greatest 
production. Man can never rest until all the meaning which 
its various developments contain stands clearly revealed. 



THE LIFE FORCE IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 61 

Though the Life Force seems to be a common principle in 
all the forms it organizes, and to follow the same methods so 
far as the objects it seeks permit, its manifestations in the 
different spheres of its activity are extremely different. There 
seems little in common between the tree, the fish, the horse 
and man; and yet there is a strong likeness in the first opera- 
tions of the building force to which they all owe their existence; 
and there are points of contact in the great classes where it 
seems ditHcult to distinguish them from each other. It is 
difiicult to tell that the lowest animals are not plants, and the 
least developed men seem to be only superior animals. They 
seem, in some respects, to be parts of one system of life; but 
the most characteristic examples of development in each place 
a world-wide difference between the classes. 

The plant commences with a cell, or a collection of cells, 
and builds down into the dark and damp earth and up in the 
sunlight. It uses the earth as its support and both earth and 
air are its magazines of raw material, while, by its foliage, it 
expels some gases and takes in others — the light assisting in 
its work. In the animal the building force commences with 
a center and works each way toward the extremities — in the 
lowest animals not distinguishing a head at all, but spend- 
ing more and more elaborate pains on that part as the animal 
rises in rank. 

The higher plants are firmly fixed in the earth, have no 
power of movement and no self-consciousness. All but the 
lowest animals are free to move, have sensation, consciousness, 
and a certain power of will in the control of their motions ; 
these gifts becoming more complete in the higher animals 
until they find a kind of boundless development in man. 

The plant finds its nourishment without and near it and 
draws it in by attraction through its pores; the animal goes 
about for its food which it takes into a central cavity where it 
is digested and from which it is distributed through the system 
as needed. 



62 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The plant organizes its substance directly from the crude, 
unorganized material of the earth; but the animal depends 
on the plant world as its magazine of food. It uses onlj 
organized material — plants or other animals. 

Thus the two kingdoms differ widely while being most 
intimately bound together. 



CHAPTER V. 

VEGETATION IN THE VALLEY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 

The system of life has two sides, the vegetable and the 
animal, which interlock to form a whole. In some respects, 
also, the system of vegetable life may be considered the base 
or condition of animal life. The bnilding force goes directly 
to the mineral kingdom for its material when it constructs 
vegetable forms. Decayed vegetable or animal remains, 
indeed, speed its work, but only by furnishing the material 
required in greater abundance, thereby saving time and 
enabling it to build more sumptuously. Though the general 
plan is the same, the ends are difterent in each of the two 
systems. For the vegetable the aim is restricted and modest. 
It is the servant to wait upon the animal, the magazine con- 
taining the supplies for its physical wants. 

Ihis is the leading use of vegetable life, but various others 
are seen, in all of which service is rendered to the higher class. 
It aids in the collection and deposition of some metals very 
useful to riian; it supplies petroleum and coal in vast abund- 
ance ; it furnishes numberless materials for man's higher 
development ; enriches the surface of the earth by the decay 
of its forms and covers it with beauty; supplies the most 
agreeable and nourishing fruits, and is a magazine of per- 
fumes, of medicines and of art supplies. Much of this, how- 
ever, was reserved for development as the human period 
approached. In the early days of Palaeozoic time the builder 
employed comparatively little skill on vegetable forms. 

The general plan of vegetable structures is radiate; that is, 
similar parts start from a common center, and spread out 
in various directions, while for animals there are five difterent 

63 



64 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

plans by wliich the life forms of that kingdom are graded. 
There are, however, two great classes of vegetable forms — 
Cryptogams and Phenogams — the distinction being founded 
on their modes of reproduction. Cryptogams have no proper 
flowers or fruit, the seed which produces the new plant being 
of the simplest kind, and, for the most part, there is very 
little of the surprisingly elaborate and ingenious detail found, 
as a rule, in the highei' class. 

Phenogams have flowers which surround a system of organs 
employed in producing the seed that is to give birth to the 
young plant, and the seed is commonly furnished with a store 
of nutriment for the use of the germ in the early stages of its 
development. It is the parental instinct caring for the start 
in life of its offspring. Very often this thoughtful provision 
is of the greatest advantao-e to man. All the "grains that fur- 
nish him with the '"staff" of life" are composed of this con- 
centrated food for tiie young plant stored in the seed. 

It seems entirely probable that vegetable life was introduced 
before any animal forms appeared, although geologists lia\'e 
not yet been able to prove positively that it was so. For a 
lai'ge part of the ancient time no plants are known to have 
grown on the land, only sea weeds having been preserved. 
Plants separate, concentrate, and store up in their forms the 
nutriment required by the animal, and probably the simplest 
possible vegetable growth liad supplied a sufficient quantity 
of this in the waters when the first animals appeared. It was 
only in later times, after vast masses of rock formations had 
somewhat cleared the waters of their excessive chemical solu- 
tions, that vegetable substances became sufliciently firm to be 
preserved in the forming rock of their times. 

Recently there have been found various and significant traces 
of vegetation in the Azoic rocks. The presence of carbon in 
various forms is believed to have originated in large part from 
vegetable growth, and the deposit of vast quantities of iron 
ore along the southern border of the most ancient land is by 



THE PROGRESS OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 65 

some considered due to the vegetation of the marshes of that 
time, the vegetahle infusion in the water precipitating the iron 
oxyds washed down from the neighboring rocks. When the 
conditions suitable for sea weeds had been reached, the warm 
and shallow seas probably produced an extremely abundant 
growth and served to nourish the immense swarms of the 
lower forms of animal life which are known to have existed 
in the early part of Paljeozoic Time. 

Much the larger part of ancient time had passed away before 
the rocks began to record the existence of land plants. The 
first that has been satisfactorily distinguished as such was a 
species of gigantic club moss. It is probable that many varie- 
ties of lichens and mosses had long before flourished and laid 
the foundation for the extremely profuse vegetation that now 
hastened to make ready for the era of coal. The evidence 
seems to prove that the higher lands were not in a condition 
to support a profuse vegetation, and that trees and plants 
mostly grew in marshes or very near the surface of the water. 

Many of the plants that are dwarfed in our age were then 
of great size. A large proportion of the coal was made from 
ferns and kindred plants, almost all being from the class of 
Cryptogams, of loose structure and rapid growth. The climate 
appears to have been about the same over all the globe, for 
the coal beds of every country made in the great coal period 
show that they were produced by exactly the same kind of 
forests. The temperature was evidently much like that of 
the Torrid Zone of our day, and there seems to have been a 
larger proportion of carbonic acid gas in the composition of 
the air, which would be sufficient of itself to increase the 
rapidity and luxuriance of vegetable growth. It was this 
extra carbon that was now removed to be stored up in the 
earth for future use. 

The mountains of that time were few and of no great 
height, and the regions producing coal were low and marshy. 
The conditions were therefore favorable for the rapid produc- 
5 



66 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

tion of the immense woody growth that has produced the 
hundred and fifty thousand square miles of workable coal in 
the United States—almost all of which is in, or near the bor- 
ders of, the Mississippi Basin. From near the Atlantic shore 
to the Mississippi River, and some hundreds of miles beyond, 
was a vast marshy level directly across the Northern and 
Central Valley, and across Eastern Tennessee into Middle 
Alabama. There were numerous shallow lakes and sluggish 
streams flowing mainly from the north or northeast. The 
shallow water gradually changed to marsh, and impenetrable 
jungles covered the country; a heavy, hot, stifl.ing air brooded 
over the whole, and a dense mass of forest and marsh vegeta- 
tion, of which the human period gives no example, accumu- 
lated the material for the coal-beds. 

This region was immersed under water and raised again a 
multitude of times — in some places at least a hundred. A 
small change of level and a sudden flood from higher ground 
would sweep all this dense mass into heaps and cover it with 
water and mud before it could decay. The great feature of 
this age of the world, which must have lasted a very long 
time, was the vegetation and its sudden burial so many times 
in succession. Had there been a human being present to 
note this splendor of development in the plant world and 
its repeated ruin, it must have seemed an utter confusion and 
waste. If this material, however, had not been so stored up, 
one of the principal means of human discipline and develop- 
ment would have failed in our century and the times to come, 
and the fate of mankind would have been greatly changed. 

Pi-evious to the coal-making period in the last part of the 
Palaeozoic, or ancient time, the first representatives of the 
second and higher order of vegetable forms appeared. The 
Phenogams were first represented by a tree belonging to the 
Conifer tribe, which includes the pine and other cone-bearing 
trees, and they flourished to a considerable extent during the 
coal-making era. Another class, somewhat resembling the 



INTKODUCTION OF MODERN PLANTS. 67 

palm, called Cycads, was introduced during the course of that 
era. After its close the conditions of life in the air were 
much changed. 

The composition of the air was now different. The first 
mountain-making period came on, and probably the cliTnate 
was very materially changed in temperature thereby, for 
raising the land lowers the temperature of the air. 

It was indeed a long time before the mountain-making was 
complete, but that accomplished, all the circumstances had 
become so entirely different that the old vegetation which 
could not accommodate itself to the new relations died out; 
but it was still longer before distinctively modern forms be- 
came the ruling feature. 

Accordingly, the first series of rocks after those of the coal 
formation still show a strong likeness in vegetable forms to 
those of the coal period. In the first two eras of the Mesozoic 
that follow this first series — chilled the Permian — the cone- 
bearing species of trees increase and grow more modern, and 
most of the older families represented in the coal-beds disap- 
pear; but in the last of the three eras of the middle period 
the forms now existing were very largely represented. For 
the first time oak, maple, willow, and other representative 
forest and fruit trees appear. As animal life, large and small, 
in forms similar to the present, began to abound on the land, 
among which were birds, we m&j suppose that the seed-bear- 
ing grasses were also introduced in that period. 

In the Tertiary there was a vast increase in the variety and 
modern character of the vegetable forms. It is probable that 
the Upper Valley, far west of the Mississippi, and even of the 
Missouri, was covered with vegetation more or less luxuriant, 
for a sub-tropical climate reigned even far up toward the 
pole. The rose, the whortleberry, and various other flower- 
ing shrubs of that period have been found. The earth began 
to deck itself in all the beauty of our present warm regions, 
and insect life swarmed among the flowers. The modern era 
in plant life had fully opened. 



68 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Thus we find that the lowest forms of the lowest class of 
vegetable life were early developed in the most ancient seas 
and probably in extraordinary abundance; that lichens and 
mosses probably soon came to cover the early continents to 
which all the higher classes of the lowest division of plants — 
the flowerless Cryptogams — were added as the coal period 
approached. The cone-bearing trees were also introduced be- 
fore the age of coal. They were the only representatives of 
the Phenogams or true seed-bearing plants, and. indeed, the 
first true trees of ancient time. The Cycads were added in the 
latter part of the coal era. These were Phenogams, in form 
resembling palms, but fruiting like Conifers. These were 
both among the lowest of the higher division of plants. 

Ferns, Conifers and Cycads chiefly ruled the Middle Period, 
although the more perfect modern trees and plants came in 
before its close. The Middle Period is called, botanically, the 
" Age of Cycads," for they were then extremely numerous, 
but steadily diminished in its closing ages until in modern 
times there are comparatively few and these are confined to 
tropical regions. With Cenozoic time were rapidly intro- 
duced the most perfect vegetable structures to supply the 
wants of ripening animal life. 

The part vegetable life has played in the processes of stor- 
ing the Great Valley with materials eminently serviceable to 
man has been therefore large and most important. The best 
and largest supplies of iron, the vegetable kingdom has assisted 
to accumulate. It furnished the base of supplies to the animal 
life that has produced near two thirds of the rock in the Yal- 
ley— the limestones — and, in some minute forms, called Dia- 
toms, formed rock of considerable extent. It has supplied 
much of the petroleum and all the coal with w^hich the 
Valley is made so eminently rich, and has crowned its long 
list of great services by furnishing a surface soil of unrivalled 
deptli and value over the most of the wide-spreading bowl. 
Its modern forests, since the Glacial period especially, prepared 



RELATIONS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 69 

the country for primitive man, and give to civilized man no 
small store of wealth. 

Tliat the vegetable and animal kingdoms form the two har- 
monious sides of one system of life is, finally, noticeable in 
this, that the life force in animals uses the oxygen of the 
Atmosphere as the chemical agent for preparing its building 
material and rejects carbonic acid gas; while in vegetables 
the contrary is true, oxygen being rejected and carbonic acid 
gas being stored in the form of woody fibre. 



CHAPTER VI. 

ANIMAL LIFE IN THE VALLEY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 

The Life Force gained many and important ends in the 
comparatively narrow limits of the Vegetable Kingdom. In 
the plan of animal life several principles appeared that vastly 
raised this class in the scale of being, and left open the most 
wonderful possibilities to progress. In the very lowest ani- 
mals there was a feeble dawning of a new individuality in 
sensation, in intelligence, and iji the power of self-control. 
At the first there was but the faintest glimmer of these, and 
sometimes they were not all united in the same animal. It 
is sometimes very difiicult to tell whether a structure is veg- 
etable or animal, so slight is the space that separates the most 
sensitive organization among plants from animals having the 
least vitality. 

But sensation was to be gradually developed until it became 
exquisitely perfect in the elaborate nervous system of the 
highest sub-kingdom of animals ; the capacity of self-motion 
was to increase into the most remarkable powers of voluntary 
physical force; and intelligence was to ripen until most phases 
of the supreme mental attributes and capacities of man had 
been shadowed forth more or less completely, though in every 
case fragmentally and in limited development; and, finally, by 
a vast leap, all these qualities of intelligence, freed, as to the 
race at large, from definite limitations, were to be concentrated 
in the Ideal Animal. 

There is a world of suggestive mystery in the gradual devel- 
opment of the animal frame until some of the animals came 
to possess physical parts closely resembling man's; and a still 
greater mystery is the instinct and intelligence so like, and bo 

70 



THE FIVE CLASSES OF ANIMALS. 71 

unlike, man's bestowed on the different classes of animals. 
In each animal these higher gifts are very perfect so far as 
the special ends of its life can be served by them. There they 
cease. A single strongly marked quality belongs to each race 
with all the intelligence necessary to a successful career in such 
a character. There the resemblance ceases. The animal has 
no such reserve of unused powers and unlimited capacity of 
development, in a thousand ways, as are seen in man. There 
is a breadth and reserve of force in the higher qualities of the 
man that destroy the idea of his true and close relationship 
to the animal world. The most intelligent animal has but the 
shadow of the man's mental compass outside the range of its 
physical instincts. It is often a dense shadow, but, in the end, 
is nothing more. What mystery of origin and destiny lies 
behind these real physical, and instinctive and shadowy men- 
tal, relationships? What is man that immeasurable geological 
time should labor so strenuously and constantly for him, and 
that all organized nature should bear the broken and shadowy 
fragments of his image ? 

There are five great types or divisions of animal life, 
regarded as to the plan of their physical structure — Pro- 
tozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, Articulates and Vertebrates. 
The first four are called Invertebrates. Most of the larger 
and more important and perfect animals belong to the last 
class — Vertebrates. The lowest class, Protozoans, are very 
simple, almost formless and jelly-like in structure, with no 
nervous system, often no mouth or stomach or permanent 
limbs. Whenever these are required they are extemporized 
for the occasion. They are usually extremely minute. They 
are commonly inclosed in a shell, and the substance of the 
animal is protruded to secure food. The lowest class of these 
are believed to have been introduced the first of all animals, 
although the absolute proof seems, as yet, wanting. 

The Radiates are formed on the plan of a flower, similar 
parts spreading from a common center. They are very often 



72 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

permanently attached to the sea bottom, or rocks, brilliantlj 
colored, of most graceful forms, and must have caused the 
early sea bottoms, when they were most numerous, to resem- 
ble a flower garden. Many of the corals were radiate. Most, 
though not all, were inclosed in some kind of shell. They 
were extraordinarily numerous in ancient time, and their shells 
contributed very largely to the making of limestone rock. 
They had, for the most part, no nervous system, and their 
mouths were surrounded with tentacles, or a kind of claw, 
with which they seized their food. 

Mollusks are soft-bodied animals, with a nervous system 
of scattered masses. The oyster is a Mollusk, a shell being 
essential to the protection of the soft baggy body. They often 
had various appendages, serving as arms or feet. They are 
very numerous in the Palaeozoic rocks. 

Articulates are jointed animals. Crabs, worms, and insects 
are of this class. The joints are in the skin or covering, the 
internal cavities extending continuously through all the joints. 
The nervous system is below the stomach and other cavities, 
but has a ganglion, or bunch, in each segment. Articulates 
have constantly increased in numbers from their first appear- 
ance to the present time. 

Vertebrates have a jointed internal skeleton with a continu- 
ous cavity through the bones of the back, for the large nervous 
cord, and other cavities for the various instruments of a highly 
organized life below or in front of it. In the vertebrates the 
head is carefully elaborated and with more ])ains as the animal 
rises in rank until, in man, it fully dominates and controls the 
whole body, which is kept as erect as a tree on a very narrow 
base, yet with admirable powers of locomotion. There are 
four classes of Vertebrates— Fishes, Reptiles, Birds and 
Mammals. Fishes are the lowest class and have no lungs, 
air bladders supplying their place, and, as well as reptiles, are 
cold blooded ; but reptiles usually have lungs— except one 
division of them, which has the air bladder in early life and 



THE INTRODUCTION OF SPECIES. 73 

Inngs at a later period. Birds and mammals are all warm 
blooded and of a liigher style of structure and vital organ- 
ization. 

Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks and Articulates were intro- 
duced in very early geological times, and, as it would seem 
at the first glance, nearly together; but there is much reason 
to believe that the first species whose stony structures have 
been preserved in the lowest Palaeozoic rocks were preceded 
by a long series of species lower in rank, and whose fragile 
shells could not be preserved in the metamorphic rocks, or those 
which were very much transformed by the great heat and the 
active chemical forces of the earlier times. Much limestone 
was found in those periods, which, probably, as in later times, 
was composed chiefly of animal shells, and a part of the car- 
bon found in great quantity in various forms in the Azoic 
rocks is thought to have been produced, partly, at least, by 
the oily parts of animal bodies. 

The first animal forms distinctly preserved were of the 
lower classes, but not from the very lowest families, and not 
usually the lowest species in their respective families. There 
is, however, no real exception to the rule that a steady general 
progress in the rank of animal forms is found in the rocks, 
from the lowest that contain them at all to the highest. The 
forms found in any system of rocks are higher in organization 
than in the system "of rocks next below, and not so high as in 
the system that follows. All these, and various other obser- 
vations, furnish fairly good ground for thinking that animal 
life was probably introduced by its simplest forms which have 
not been preserved. 

Twenty thousand species from the Palseozoic rocks have 
been described. It is probable that large numbers will yet be 
added, and that multitudes were too slight in organization to 
be preserved, or too unfavorably located to become known to 
us. Yet, a general impress was so distinctly given to the 
whole life of each age by the marked features belonging to it 



74 THE MISSISSIPPI VALI.KY. 

that a practiced eye can readilj^ tell from tlie biglit of a few 
genera whether they belong to earlier or later geological 
periods from the degree oi finish — the coarseness or fineness of 
the workmanship. Yery many classes of the simplest strnc- 
ture, have been in existence from first to last as orders, or 
great classes, but the species have been many times changed. 
Not a species now exists that was found in the coal period, or 
before it, or even long after it. The first division of recent 
time — the Eocene — contains but five per cent of the species 
now living. 

There was, then, improvement from age to age. There 
was a difference in the length of life of species and in 
their extent. Some are found only in one particular 
deposit — the rock made in a single age — others extended 
through a succession of deposits — a number of ages; some are 
found only in a limited region and others extended to every 
reg-ion whose rocks are accessible to us. The introduction of 
higher forms, as time advanced, was a general and constant 
feature. 

Invertebrate life is low in vital organization, in physical 
structure, and contains no animals at all comparable to the 
immense size of many of the later vertebrate animals. 
What they lacked in size, however, was far more than made 
up in numbers. The aqueous rocks of the Valley average 
nearly a mile in thickness and more than two-thirds of them, 
perhaps, are the product of animal life. IIow inconceivably 
vast must have been the number of animals whose shells 
could produce such huge results! How inexhaustibly active 
has been the Life Force ! For it was that Builder which se- 
creted the lime and silex in the shells of animals, collecting 
them from the water which held them in solution. When the 
animals died the shells became the sport of the waves and were 
mechanically or chemically crumbled, often to powder, to form 
every kind of marble and most other building stone. The 
layers extended, as a rule, a vertical mile beneath us. 



ANIMALS OF THE ANCIENT KOOKS. 75 

The softer parts of animals and many vegetables are be- 
lieved to have produced petroleum. If so, how inexhaustible 
may be the quantity of that useful oil! It was, in large part, 
this organic chemistry which enriched the soil of the Valley. 
The limestones are capable of being reduced to very fine dust 
and its constituents furnish rich material for plant structures. 
To animal life is due much of the agricultural wealth of the 
Valley. 

The Ancient Geological Times drew on far toward the Age 
of Coal before the great vertebrate class of animals had a 
single representative. The lowest of vertebrates, fishes, were 
the first to appear. The earliest of this class that has been 
found was a kind of shark with an imperfect frame, in that 
it was not bony but cartilaginous. These first known species 
were not the very lowest in structure. This seems, so far as is 
yet proven, to be a law controlling the introduction of animals, 
and, with those who do not favor the strictest form of the 
evolution theory, is used as a strong argument for the theory 
of special creation as opposed to evolution. It is, however, 
supposed by many that the lowest forms were really first 
introduced, but that, owing to their having no hard parts 
they were not preserved. It is a question which can not, as 
yet, be definitely settled. 

Fishes became very numerous before the coal, but it 
was not till about the middle of the Mesozoic Time, and 
long after the Age of Coal, that bony fishes resembling 
modern forms appeared. During the Age of Coal the still 
higher class of reptiles was introduced. The two divisions 
of this class are Amphilnans, which have gills and air- 
bladders, like fishes, in their early life, but pass through a 
singular transformation afterward, develop lungs and become 
air-breathing land animals; and true reptiles born with lungs 
and having the air as their proper element of life, though 
they often pass much of their time in water. The amphib- 
ians were first introduced ; true reptiles were not found 



76 THK MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

till after the Age of Coal. The earliest are known only 
by their tracks made in mud, dried afterward by the sun, 
and then covered and preserved by another deposit. The 
existence of the first birds known is discovered in the 
same way. These discoveries lend considerable probability 
to the supposition that the first animals of every class may 
really have been the lowest of their order whose organization 
was too slight be be preserved. 

It thus appears that no animals with lungs existed before 
the coal period, the probable reason being that there was then 
too much carbonic acid gas in the air to permit the existence 
of animal life in it. All the coal treasured up during the 
Carboniferous Epoch in such vast quantities is believed to have 
been derived from the air through vegetable growth — the woody 
parts of plants and trees being chiefly formed of carbon re- 
ceived from the atmosphere. The air was purified during the 
coal age and rendered a suitable element for the development 
of land animals. Reptiles are, like fishes, cold-blooded, and 
therefore of low vitality, and could most easily endure an 
impure atmosphere. 

It seems to have been only when the atmosphere had been 
purified by the embodiment and burying of so much carbon, and 
when the mountain system of the Alleghanies had been raised, 
that the conditions were favorable for the introduction of warm- 
blooded animals. As fishes seemed to give rise to reptiles by 
insensibly grading ofi" certain of their classes in that direction, 
through the amphibian — living one half of its life as a fish, 
or an exclusively aquatic animal, and then becoming, by trans- 
formation, a land animal — which was followed by the related 
pure reptile, and exclusively land animals — so the last, or true 
reptile, seemed to give rise to tribes more and more like birds 
until the true bird appeared. There is really much to inti- 
mate that the succession of life has been a grand chain from 
first to last; and, if the links in many cases do not actually 
interlock, there are many apparent reasons for supposing 



THE AGE OF KEPTII.I::S. 77 

that they did so in reality. At the same time the apparent 
suddenness of very great changes in lite-forms sliows, accord- 
ing to many men of science, indications of another and deeper 
Law of Introduction not yet firmly grasped. There is much 
that is now inexplainable on both sides. 

Mesozoic, or middle, time was made remarkable by its vast 
numbers of reptiles and their huge and monstrous forms. It 
is called, in reference to animal life, the Age of Eeptiles. 
They were sometimes eighty feet in length. There were mon- 
strous sea-serpents, and a great variety of reptiles twenty to 
fifty feet in length, that sported about the sea-shores, that 
roamed over the land, the terror of other animals that often 
became their prey, or that fed on the foliage of trees. Others 
had immense wings like the bat. The evidence appears to 
show that the lands were covered with verdure and swarmed 
with animal life, of which it is probable comparatively few 
specimens have been preserved in the Valley. 

Many of these monster reptiles have been preserved in the 
then rock-making regions of Kansas and Nebraska. The 
types, however, are the same in all lands; for, until after the 
greater mountain-making era, a warm-temperate or sub- 
tropical climate reigned far w'lthin the Arctic Circle, and 
great quantities of coal were made there and in various parts 
of the earth. The ancient genera and species of the animals 
of the sea had disappeared under the changed conditions, but 
more modern forms, for the most part, took their places, 
although some classes quite disappeared. There was a great 
development of insects, and birds, chiefly aquatic species, 
became numerous, while, about the middle of the Mesozoic, 
the class of vertebrates to which man belongs, mammals, or 
those that suckle their young, appeared. These gradually 
increased and became quite numerous toward the close of 
Mesozoic time, while reptiles as steadily decreased and passed 
over but few of their representatives to the Cenozoic, or 
Hecent Period. 



78 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

From the opening of that period there was a steady and 
rapid modernizing of animal life in keeping with the general 
approach to present conditions of continents, seas, and the 
atmosphere. Vast quantities of coal were magazined from 
the carbonic-acid gas of the atmosphere just before the Rocky 
Mountains were raised, or during that process, and the air was 
fitted to nourish higher and more intense forms of life. The 
shores of the Gulf abounded in immense whales, and in the 
rocks of the Western Yalley elephants, rhinoceroses, and many 
other huge animals, which yet approached modern types, are 
found. One of the most interesting is the horse, which com- 
mences in the Eocene, or opening period of Recent Time, as 
small as a/ba?, and withybwr toes. As time passes the horse 
becomes larger, till it is gigantic, and, one by one, loses its 
toes till but one remains, the nail of which expands into the 
hoof as we now find it. It is an interesting revelation of 
gradual changes of form and quality. At the same time there 
flourished in the Yalley hyenas, wolves, tigers, panthers, 
tapirs, hogs, camels, lamas, deer, hares, squirrels, beavers, 
and many other ancestors of modern animals of almost every 
class. 

After the Glacial Period many of these disappeared from 
the western continent. It is somewhat curious to note 
that many plants and animals that first appeared in North 
America appear in the riext age and group of rocks of 
the Old World, as if this was at some periods the Old World 
which colonized Europe as the then Neio World. There has 
been found reason to believe that the first land was raised 
along the north of the Yalley; the Alleghanies are thought 
to be the oldest of the large mountain-ranges; and probably 
the upper part of the Yalley east of the Missouri was the 
most extensive region whose rock-making and general struct- 
ure was completed immediately after the Age of Coal. It 
would not, therefore, be surprising if it was ready for the 
habitation of some classes of animals before Europe, which 



UAN THE IDEAL ANIMAX,. 79 

continued to pass througli important changes until late in 
o-eological time. Yet many of these animals, after a long 
career here, wholly disappeared while still continuing in 
Europe. 

When the Glacial Period came on it is natural to suppose 
that the hi<rher land animals retreated southward before it, 
and many of them survived it to perish before man could be 
benefited by them — as the horse, reindeer, and others. The 
animal kingdom continued, however, to be represented by 
huge and powerful animals, and to raise some of its classes in 
the scale of organization till man appeared. He was the Ideal 
Animal. Their tendency had ever been to struggle forward 
from feeble to lively sensation ; from few and confused parts 
and small measures of energy to many and higldy elaborated 
sets of powers; from a few scattered fascicles of nerves to the 
extensive and well-protected system of the vertebrates; and 
the prone body and barrel form of the fish was soon excelled 
by a more and more erect head, while tlie long posterior body 
was shortened until only legs were left, while all the noble 
vital organs were raised in power and crowded into the front 
until the head was raised perpendicularly above tliem, and the 
fore legs were no longer instruments of locomotion but ser- 
vants of tlie brain. 

This uprightness, with the face and forehead on a perpen- 
dicular line with the front of the body, reached the limit of 
possible improvement in the frame, while the intelligence of 
man joined all the instincts and limi*:ed perceptions and 
passions of all the animal world in one mind, with undefined 
and fairly unlimited possibilities of power and growth, to 
which w^as added a class of faculties constituting his liiHiest 
value — moral powers — the love of virtue and truth. As there 
can be no nobler frame in the animal world, so there can be 
no being essentially greater than man, in his highest and 
peculiar gifts, unless by an expansion of the same qualities. 
There was greater intelligence and power in the Principle 



80 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

that planned and produced the world, but since man can 
comprehend the work he must be of the same nature as the 
Workman. 



CHAPTEE yil. 

GENERAL VIEW OF THE FINISHED VALLEY. 

We have seen how heat and the loss of heat provided the 
inconceivable force in the crust of the earth required for the 
immense changes of every geological age. The vastness of 
the power is very evident, as also is the restraint laid on it. 
It was, so to speak, tamed and made to work in harness. 
"What it has done shows how easily it could have become a 
destroyer instead of a builder. Yet it worked slowly, cau- 
tiously, never getting ahead of its chemical, mechanical, and 
organic associates. Chemical attractions and repulsions made 
and unmade rocks, and stored up minerals at the points where 
the forethought that guided volcanic force and the power 
arising from contraction designated, winds and waves, sun 
and storm, torrent and gravity made rock in the proper places, 
and the Life Force worked with unflagging zeal in vegetable 
and animal to supply the most useful rocks and to store the 
richest treasures. Finally; cold came to do a most important 
surface work and then retired, leaving the elow falling and 
rising of the levels, the waters, dews, rains, and the sun to 
re-arrange the drift, vital energy to re-people it with animal 
and vegetable life, and present it finished to man when he 
should appear. 

We have now to observe its general features as completed. 
From north to south the extreme of its length is about 2,000 
miles; the extreme descent through its center in that distance 
being a little over 1,G00 feet. The descent is nowhere very- 
abrupt, although about three fourths of it are accomplished in 
the upper part of the Yalley, from the head of the Mississippi 
to the mouth of the Missouri. The very gradual fall from 
6 81 



S2 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

that point to the Gulf is one of the most important features 
of the Yalley. 

Its extremest width, from the heights of the eastern water- 
shed to the crest of the Rocky Mountains, is not far from 
1,600 miles. The western rim of the bowl is much the 
highest ; about 2,000 feet in general along the east, though 
considerably higher in some places and lower in others; while 
the head waters of the Missouri are nearly 7,000 feet high ; 
those of the Arkansas, 10,000 ; and of the Red River about 
2,500. The descent on the west is very gradual, forming, for 
the most part, vast grassy plains, on which the steady change 
of level, though so great on the whole, is scarcely perceptible 
to the eye. On the east, the region inward from the moun- 
tains is much more broken, and, in part of West Yirginia, 
Kentucky and Tennessee, a ridge of mountain is thrown west- 
ward, so that a northward slope is made to meet the general 
southward descent, in the bed of the Ohio. It is a ridge across 
the eastern center of the bowl which has prevented the ex- 
treme " washing " of the surface that has taken place west of 
the Missouri on the " Plains." 

The whole of the united basins of the great central river 
and its branches, together with adjoining sections that naturally 
annex themselves to it by position and relations, cover an area 
of about 1,800,000 square miles — about the size of Europe 
without its colder and almost worthless northern regions and 
the poorer parts of Russia further south. The actual basins of 
the Mississippi and its tributaries cover an area of 1,256,000 
square miles— it is often stated at 1,244,000, but that omits the 
delta. The adjoining and affiliated sections are the basin of the 
Great Lakes, which only a few feet of soil prevents from pour- 
ing its waters into the Mississippi, as it formerly actually did; 
the basin of the Red River of the North; and the Gulf coast, 
including the Yalley of the Rio Grande, and, therefore, all of 
Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, with large parts of the 
Territories further north. The length of the main river and 



THK GREAT UIVKR AND ITS liUANCHKS. 



83 



its subordinate streams, the height of their head-waters above 
the level of the sea, and the area of their basins, with some 
other facts, are given in the following table from Humphrey's 
and Abbot's " Report to the Government on the Physics 
and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River." 













Disch'i-t<e 






Distance 


Ilc-islit 


Width 


Downfall 


of water 


Area of 




from 


above 


at 


of 


from 


Basin. 


RIVER. 


mouth. 


sea. 


mouth. 


ram. 


mouth 
per sec. 


SQUARS 




MILES. 


FEET. 


FEET. 


INCHES. 


CUBIC FT. 


MILES. 


Upper Mississippi... 


1,830 


1,680 


5,000 


35.2 


105,000 


169,000 


Missouri _ 


3,908 


6,800 


3,000 


20.9 


120,000 


518,000 


Ohio 


1,265 


1,649 


3,000 


41.5 


158,000 


314,000 


Arltansas 


1,514 
1,200 


10,000 
2,450 


1,500 

800 


29.3 
390 


63,000 

57 000 


189,000 


Red River 


97,000 


Yazoo 


500 


310 


850 


46.3 


43 000 


13,850 


St. Francis 


380 
1,286 


1,110 
416 


700 
2,470 


41.1 


31,000 
675,000 


10,500 


Lower Missis-;ippi ... 




Several small direct 


























33,500 


Delta of Mississippi 














helow mouth of R d 














River 












13,500 



This grand network of rivers supplies an internal navigation 
by steamboats of near 9,000 miles. The main stream is navi- 
gable from its mouth to St. Paul by large steamers — 1,944 miles 
— and beyond St. Anthony's Falls 80 miles further, with 350 
miles, on its branches in Minnesota and 220 miles on tiie 
Illinois River. The Ohio is navigable to Pittsburgh, 975 
miles and that distance is about doubled by including the 
capacity of its branches. The Missouri is navigable almost 
2,000 miles, and in high water 600 more. The Arkansas and 
the Red Rivers are navigable several hundred miles and the 
distance is doubled in high water. Several other streams add 
many hundreds of miles to navigation. 

The regions of the Yalley so reached are the fairest and 
richest for farming and mercantile purposes. The eastern 
and central parts of the Yalley are extremely well watered, 
and the shore-line of the Great Lakes, the Gulf shore, and 
navigable streams emptying into it, altogether furnish for the 



84 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Valley basin commercial waterways fully 15,000 miles in 
length. The basin of the Missouri includes nearly five 
twelfths of the surface drained by this network of streams, 
and it contains some of the best, as also of the poorest, land 
in the whole Valley. 

The Gulf Slope, or the Lower Basin, except the immediate 
basins of the Mississippi and its branches, failed of the special 
provision made for the upper basin; the drift is largely con- 
fined to the northern and central regions. Yet the rock under- 
lying the Gulf States is nearly the latest made, and therefore 
softer, as a rule, than that formed in earlier times; its climate 
forces vegetation more, and therefoi-e secures more vegetable 
mould in proportion, while its long productive seasons and 
more equable heat give it a monopoly of many rare and val- 
uable products. It is also more abundantly furnished with 
moisture than most other parts of the Valley. 

About two thirds of the whole area lie west of the central 
stream; about one half of that region has incomparable ad- 
vantages in soil, climate, and situation, leaving nearly one 
third of the whole area of the Valley less favored in the same 
way. But this varies largely, nearly all of it having possi- 
hilities of a high order, which will be ultimately developed. 
A portion of the entire surface, probably equal to the whole 
of Europe — Russia, Norway and Sweden excepted — is beyond 
measure rich in agricultural capabilities. 

From the Missouri River westward are treeless plains. For 
six hundred miles Eastward of that river in the up])er valley 
there is a large proportion of prairie; forests naturally grow- 
ing only in rare spots and bordering streams. There has been 
much speculation as to the causes of this natural treelessness. 
The level or rolling eastern prairies, at least, were formed by 
the drift which filled up and evened off the inequalities of the 
rocky foundation of the Valley. Over this region, or large 
parts of it, shallow lakes continued for long periods, and after 
a time for a large part of the year the water in them was stag- 



THE ORIGIN OF TREELESS PRAIRIES. 85 

nant, vegetation of the kind peculiar to such ponds rapidly 
filled them up and formed a deep soil, or loam. The inequal- 
ities now peculiar to the surface, were due partly to the under- 
lying rock, partly to the unequal force of the currents distrib- 
uting the drift, perhaps partly, where the rolling is regular, 
to the measured motion and rush of waves on a large and 
moderately shallow inland sea stirred by powerful winds, but 
perhaps more to the action of the waters in draining off, or to 
■subsequent flood by the rains and melting snows, as is very 
distinctly shown by the ravines formed by the rush of water 
•or gradual washing between high and lower levels. 

It is believed by some that the soil of the prairies was so 
largely formed in this way under stagnant water, as to contain 
qualities — chiefly acids of various kinds — unfavorable to the 
growth of trees, and that they can only take root and flourish 
in it after it has been opened by cultivation to the air, or when 
they have been expelled by washing and drying in the course 
of many centuries under favorable circumstances. Therefore, 
they remain treeless until a forest growth is introduced and 
cared for by man. Others And the cause in the degree of 
fineness to which the material of the soil has been reduced, 
and see confirmation of the theory in the growth of timber on 
pebbly knolls and on the uneven lands bordering streams, or 
in the bottoms kept damp and light by vicinity to moisture 
but where water does not lie long enough to pack it hard 
and smother the roots of trees. Others have believed prairies 
to be caused by the annual fires made by the Indians for cen- 
turies past. 

None of these theories appear capable of explaining all the 
facts, although it is highly probable that each has its place and 
degree of influence in the absence of forest vegetation from so 
large a part of the Yalley. A more general and powerful cause 
has been looked for to explain the treelessness of large regions on 
ever}^ continent. The course of mountain chains, and their 
relations to the cloud-bearing currents of the atmosphere 



86 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

appear to furnish this general principle. Accordingly, gen- 
eral fertility, fm'est regions, and deserts, depend on the loca- 
tion of mountains and their effect on atmospheric currents 
that take up and distribute the vapors of the sea. 

The mountains of the west coast of the United States, ris- 
iuir liio-h and cool into the air and above the clouds, condense 
the vapors that form them, and, for the most part, little rain 
from the Pacific falls east of the Urst, or most westerly, range 
of the Rocky Mountains. 

The eastern and central j)arts of the United States are 
therefore supplied with moisture from the Atlantic, and the 
larger measure of this comes from the Trade Winds — steady 
currents that blow across from Africa — within or near the 
tropics. These winds enter the opening between North and 
South x\merica, and are neither deprived of their moisture hy 
the low range of mountains in Central America, nor permitted 
to pass across into the Pacific except in part. Their general 
direction is changed by the form of the continent there and 
the current is set northeastward. Taking up large quantities 
of moisture from the Gulf they spread over the low-lying 
Valley, which opens itself in that direction to receive them. 

The shores of the Gulf are heavily watered, and the central 
stream of rain-laden currents. sets broadly in the general di- 
rection of the Alleghanies, nearly northeast. Eastern Texas 
and part of Arkansas are well watered, but the western line of 
the heavy rainfall crosses the Mississippi and Western Ken- 
tucky into Indiana. As the rain clouds thin out more and 
more toward the west of the Yalley, so do the natural praii-ies 
increase. Illinois has a large increase on Western Indiana, 
they increase westward in Iowa and Eastern Nebraska, and at 
length only the narrowest strip of forest is found on the 
plains along the streams, and even these almost entirely dis- 
appear before the mountains are reached. 

As this general prinei]^le accounts for the large amount of 
moisture in South America, as also for its treeless Llanos and 



THE RAINFALL IN DIFFERENT SECTIONS. 87 

Pampas, the Steppes of Kussia and Siberia, and the Deserts 
of Asia, Africa and Australia, it may be considered a true 
one. It is conlirtned very emphatically by the measure of the 
rainfall in diiferent parts of the Yalley. The table of rainfall 
for the subordinate basins of the Mississippi shows that the 
Valley of the Ohio receives, on the average, more than twice 
as much as that of the Missouri. It it quite certain that the 
character of the soil has something to do with the distribu- 
tion of the prairie and timber east of the Mississippi, and even 
the Missouri, yet it seems an incidental influence compared 
with the more determining and decisive point of the average 
measure of rainfall. 

There is, also, as the rain thins out westward, an increasing 
inequality of rain (as an average) for the different seasons of 
the year. The law regulating the winds and the clouds (the 
details of which would be too lengthy for this place) cause 
seventy -five per cent of the rains that fall on the Western 
prairies, or " plains," to occur in Spring and Summer when 
most needed for herbage and agriculture. A nearly even dis- 
tribution for each season, as in the Atlantic regions, would be 
iatal to aoricultural success. A favorable form of the struc- 
ture of Xew Mexico and Colorado increases the amount of 
iiioisture they receive. 

It will thus be seen that the form of the Yalley and its 
relations to the Gulf of Mexico, the high relief of the coast 
of Mexico and Central America, and the relations of the 
Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean have a most important influence 
on its winds and rainfall, and thereby on the remarkable fruit- 
fulness of its soil. The general course of the winds during 
the productive months of the year from the South, or w^armer 
latitudes, also gives a semi-tropical character to the climate 
of the Valley far to the Xorth, and extends the productive 
regions of the interior of the continent almost into the center 
of British America. The depression in that direction to the 
Arctic Ocean also renders the Winters more severe, while it 
extends further South the region of the most useful grains. 



88 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Most of the relations of the Yalley, within and withont, 
are admirable. Its farthest extremities are brought into rela- 
tion with the center and the South by the Missouri and Ohio; 
the long string of the Great Lakes connects much of its most 
fruitful region with the East by the break of the mountain 
chains in New York, and the Gulf gives still more perfect 
and immediate commercial relations with the outside world. 
The southern Yalley is compensated for its failure to receive 
a general covering of the valuable drift by its greater humidity 
and warmth and excellent commercial position, while the cen- 
tral and northern parts are indemnified for their isolation in 
the center of the continent by their extraordinary fertility, 
singularly favorable climate and double system of waterways, 
and their vast levels invite the extraordinary development of 
railways they have recently received. 

With these favorable circumstances is joined another of 
singular consequence to the speedy unfolding of all its 
advantages; an unusual readiness to open its various sources 
of wealth in all their magnitude. The seasons are long and 
the climate favorable to perfection of vegetable growth, while 
the evenness of the surface, the softness of the soil and its 
freedom to so large an extent from forests, promote speedy, 
excellent and large returns to the agriculturist. Its minerals 
lie at once near the surface of the earth, and, usually, near the 
readiest and cheapest means of transport. Yarious favorable 
conditions invite and reward enterprise in industry, manufac- 
tures and commerce to a degree unknown together in any other 
section of the world. Nature is here in her freest and most 
open-handed mood from whatever point she is viewed. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE MINERAL TREASURES OF THE VALLEY. 

The highest kind of power known to us is that which belongs 
to mind; that which organizes matter into living forms and 
so confers on it new offices and capabilities, is next lower, 
beneath which is the power residing in chemical attraction 
and repulsion; the mechanical force or weight oi matter— 
which measures the power of the attraction called gravitation 
—being the lowest. Intelligence has evidently superintended 
the operation of the lower forms of power, from first to last, 
and probably they are merely the modes in which the Supreme 
Intelligence displays its energy. 

The earth has ever been a vast chemical laboratory. Mental 
and organic powers are scarcely more wonderful or mysterious 
than chemical force, and they seem dependent on it, in some 
form, for each of their innumerable manifestations. It is to 
this active agent and its extraordinary properties that the vast 
mineral accumulations of the Valley are due. It has acted 
with the e-reatest visror where heat and moisture were abund- 
ant, and therefore its most stupendous deeds were accom- 
plished in the early ages of the World, when the crust was 
thin, when the internal heat of the earth could make itself 
powerfully felt on the surface, and while the surface of the 
Valley was largely covered with water. The largest amount 
of mineral stores was usually accumulated at the point where 
these two elements met. 

Most of the metals have been collected in large quantities 
by means of water heated by volcanic, or by chemical, forces 
and therefore along the lines \'iBLere volcanic energies broke 
out. Yet, the largest accumulations of iron, the production 

89 



90 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

of coal and perhaps of lead, did not require, apparently, any 
great degree of volcanic heat for their iunnediate deposit. 
Here the more remote and gradual operations of heat led to 
the final result. Chemistry, as well as vital force, has had a 
graduated development to a certain extent. It had its special 
periods for the accomplishment of vurious tasks. Rocks of a 
certain composition could only be produced under certain cir- 
cumstances, and different classes of metals must wait their 
turn to be gathered in large masses. There was a constant 
succession of services performed by chemistry for our Yalley 
through the geological ages. 

Iron is diffused very widely and abundantly through the 
rocks under many com])inations. It is thought by some that 
the proportion is still larger in the center of the earth and 
even that it may constitute two thirds of the mass of the 
earth. The composition of the meteors — mostly iron — that 
have reached the earth from other spheres suggests this view, 
in which case the earth may be considered as ballasted with 
iron, and to have embodied in its true crust the larger quantity 
of its various other and lighter mineral substances. 

Iron was specially abundaiit in the Azoic and primary rocks 
and the largest and purest beds date from that time. It is 
thought that beds of iron are always due to the chemical 
action of decomposed vegetable matter. The deposits Qf 
iron now being made are all accomplished in this way and it 
seems ])robable that it has always been done in the same man- 
ner, and that masses of this metal are both the evidence and 
the measure of the vegetation of the time and place of deposit. 
In this case evidence would be furnished of an extreme 
abundance of plant life on what have been usually called 
the Azoic rocks. The largest beds of iron known, and of a 
purity and excellence nowhere surpassed, lie along the south 
shore of Lake Superior. They are in the group of rocks 
formed immediately before the first of those known as Palae- 
ozoic, which contain the first well-preserved forms of ancient 



THE IRON ORES OF THE VALLEY. 91 

animals. At that time this region was the soutlieru shore 
line of the early continent. 

Iron was more abnndant, or more concentrated, in the early 
or Archaean rocks, and probably the vegetation uf the time 
was chiefly seaweeds, lichens and possibly the coarse vegeta- 
tion of marshes. The rains and streams leached out and 
washed down the iron of the surface rock of the land under 
various combinations, and the decaying vegetation of the bogs 
and marshes of the shore caused it to be deposited in great 
abundance and purity at these points. It is said to equal in 
quality the best ores of the Old World, while the largest single 
deposits of that continent would be mere patches compared 
to the extent of this. The area of the Lake Superior mines 
is about 150 miles in length from east to west by a varying 
breadth of from six to seventy miles. Stretching along the 
shore of the lake the ore is peculiarly vvell situated for cheap 
and easy transport to the vicinity of the best and most 
abundant coals of Ohio and Pennsylvania. 

Iron, apparently of the same age, is largely developed in 
Missouri — the very center of the Valley, and not distant from 
suitable coals for working it. Iron of this age is also found 
in Arkansas, in Xew York and New Jersey. Beds of it 
formed in various ages, and especially in the great Coal Age, 
are found in most parts of the country and very frequently in 
the neighborhood of coal areas. Although not so pure or so 
high in quality, it serves ordinary purposes well and is obtained 
and worked at a minimum of expense. 

The use of iron is a measure of comparative civilization 
and enterprise. The iron of the Valley is far more important 
and useful to it than all the gold and silver mines of the whole 
world would be. The abundance of this valuable ore indicates 
the high rank this region is to .take as a leader of future 
civilization. 

The first group of rocks that contain animal remains hold 
veins of copper of great purity and unusual abundance in the 



92 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Lake Superior regions. This metal appears to have been col- 
lected in the cracks of the rocks under the influence of heat 
and certain chemical conditions. It is found in smaller quan- 
tity in Tennessee. The Yalley now furnishes a much larger 
quantity than is required for use in this country. 

Still higher series of the ancient rocks contain lead which 
is found in large quantities in a wide region covering corners 
of the States of Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa and also in Mis- 
souri. Its deposit was not, apparently, due to volcanic action, 
hut a special chemical condition of the time and regions 
caused it to collect or crystallize in the fissures of certain 
rocks. Great quantities of hard, beautiful and useful build- 
ing stone, mainl}^ from various limestone formations, follow 
in the asceiiding series and are very abundant for all common 
purposes througli the upper Yalley. 

About midway between the earliest Palaeozoic rocks and 
those belonging to the Carboniferous, or Coal-making Age, 
lie the series of formations in which was stored vast quan- 
tities of salt. All this is not confined, however, to one group 
of rocks. In different countries it has been made in different 
ages and the process is still going on in some places. It is 
only necessary that sea- water be confined in a bed so shallow 
that it may evaporate, when it deposits its salt. If this occur 
on the sea margin where, in high tides and storms, the salt 
water may be forced in now and then to evaporate as before, 
or if there is a very slow sinking of the surface for a long 
period to furnish occasional supplies to the salt-flat, very large 
quantities may be treasured up. When this is covered with 
fornuitions of other rock, it is preserved. 

If the salt was not formed under conditions to crystallize it 
into rock and the overlying formations are porous and admit 
water to it, salt springs are formed. The salt-bearing rocks 
of Michigan cover 17,000 square miles. These are found in 
Kentucky, and in various parts of the Valley, so that there is 
an abundant supply. 



SUPPLIES OF PETROLEUM AND COAL. 93 

* 

In the next higher series are tlie rocks whicli, in the north- 
eastern part of the Valley, store uj> vast quantities of petro- 
leum. This is believed to have been distilled by a suitable 
chemistry of these rocks, in the layers below or those above 
them, from vegetables and the soft parts of the bodies of ani- 
mals. Some have thought it a pure mineral product — a com- 
bination of gases ascending from the heated regions of the 
lower rocks — and that the process is still going on. In this 
case the supply would be still more inexhaustible, but the gen- 
eral opinion is that this oil is a product of the Plant and 
Animal Kingdoms. Most of the rocks contain it in greater 
or less quantity. It is found in paying quantities only in 
porous rocks. This is sandstone in Pennsylvania and blue 
limestone in Kentucky. It added largely to the mineral 
wealth of the Yalley. 

But perhaps the most valuable mineral product of this 
region is its coal. It is necessary in vast quantities for work- 
ing iron ore on a large scale, and it bears the most important 
relation to the wonderfully effective activities of modern 
industry. Great Britain has about 12,000 square miles of her 
territory underlaid with coal. It often lies very deep, and 
is there difficult and costly to raise ; but it has made her the 
foremost nation of the world. The machinery used in manu- 
facturing in Great Britain does the work of fifty million per- 
sons besides those employed to control it, and coal applied to 
transportation enables that country to develop trade and com- 
merce to corresponding proportions. In the last seventy-five 
years, therefore, Great Britain has led the world in industry 
and commerce, and become the center of wealth among civil- 
ized nations. By means which find operative power in her 
coal she has acquired possessions and established colonies in 
every part of the world. Her aggressive spirit has been turned 
into useful channels, and she has been one of the most effect- 
ive agents of civilization. 

By her facility in manufacturing she overflows with this 



94 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

kind of product! v^eness and finds her interest iwfree trade witli 
all nations. She has long been able to ahnost flood the markets 
of the world with her goods, and undersell many of the most 
diligent and ingenious people in the special products of their 
industry in their own markets. Her commerce whitens every 
sea, she is mistress of the ocean and the common carrier of 
nations. " Her merchants have become princes." An asso- 
ciation of them acquired political possession, in Southern 
Asia, of a region ten times the size of her home islands, con- 
taining native inhabitants nearly seven times as numerous as 
she could count at home, and these two hundred millions pos- 
sessed the accumulated wealth of a very ancient civilization, 
the prolific resources of a tropical climate, and the commer- 
cial advantage of being surrounded on three sides by the sea. 

Her colonies, sharing her intelligent and enterprising spirit, 
tend to become nations; the mother country wisely sustains 
and protects them in feebleness, and when strong allows them 
a free and independent development, finding the greatest 
profit in trade with them and in the markets they supply for 
her wares. Were the forces of civilization derived from the 
coal beds of England, Scotland and Wales now subtracted 
from the world its loss would be beyond computation. 

But the same Anglo-Saxon race rules the Mississippi Yalley 
and owns the coal to which that of England is a trifle. There 
are three great fields, most of whose deposits lie wholly within 
tlie Yalley, the remainder being near its rim. The Appala- 
chian coal field, stretching from New York to Alabama, un- 
derlies 60,000 square miles. The Central or Illinois field, 
extending into Kentucky, is nearly as large. The Western 
field, including parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, 
Arkansas, and extending, with some breaks, across the Indian 
Territory into Texas, underlies an area of nearly 100,000 
sqnare miles, and the coal of more recent formation, near the 
base of the Eocky Mountains, in Colorado and AVyoming, 
extends under about 15.000 square miles. Michigan has also 
a field, which is comparatively thin, of 5,000 square miles. 



EXTfJNT AND VALUE OK COAL BEDS. 95 

It is not accurately known how much of this niaj be so 
impure or thin as to prove unprofitable to work, but so much 
is known that it may be confidently asserted that about 150,- 
000 square miles of it in the Valley will yield excellent 
results. All Europe is estimated to contain but 100,000 square 
miles of coal. To this is to be added that where the Ameri- 
can coal is the thickest and most condensed, it has been gen- 
erally elevated above the drainage in hills and mountains, 
that almost everywhere in the prairie states it is contained in 
the highest or surface series of rocks, and usually above the 
drainage valleys. It is also more accessible than much of the 
European coal to carrying agents. By these two circum- 
stances a vast expense is saved in ^yorking it. 

This wide-spread extension seems a foresight of the broad 
activities that, by means of it, were one day to cover the vast 
Valley. A glimpse of the inexhaustible quantities and bound- 
less wealth included in this resource of the Valley may be 
caught by the miners' estimate that a square mile of coal one 
foot thick would yield 1,000,000 tons. The beds, in vertical 
thickness, vary from two or three feet to twenty and thirty, and 
sometimes even more. No single layer is more than a few 
feet in thickness, but many often lie over each other, in some 
cases even to the number of sixty or seventy. It is not easy 
to imagine any activity so great as to exhaust the motive 
power residing in the coal of the Valley, and every ton of 
coal represents a large amount of activity producing wealth 
or comfort. 

Large quantities of the precious metals are stored in the 
western border of the Valley, from the head waters of the 
Missouri to Texas. These were chiefly collected in the crevices 
of the rocks, or scattei-ed through quartz rock during the eleva- 
tion of the great Rocky Mountain system, and unknown, but 
certainly large, quantities are yet to be obtained. The supply 
of silver is considered practically inexhaustible. But iron 
and coal are far more necessary to the permanent wealth and 



96 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

colossal development of a people than gold and silver, and of 
those there is most liberal provision. In these respects all 
apparent possibilities of need are richly provided for. 



CHAPTER IX. 

AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES OF THE VALLEY. 

The general surface of the Yalley of the Mississippi, 
through the direction and moderation of its slopes, is charac- 
terized by a broad and grand simplicity. By geological 
formation, by relations to the outside world, and by peculiar- 
ities of climate there are three sections. These are the Ohio 
Yalley and the southern and western watershed of the 
Lakes, to which geological, agricultural, commercial, and 
manufacturing affinities join the Upper Mississippi and its 
system of drainage; the Missouri Yalley, including that of 
the Upper Arkansas ; and the Gulf Slope, inclnding all the 
Gulf States and the Lower Mississippi Yalley. Yet, nowhere 
do dividing lines approach the character of barriers. The 
whole is so tempered and melted together by the interlocking 
of the streams and slopes and the characteristics of soil, tem- 
perature and rainfall, as to form a broad and grand whole. 
The lake system on the north and the Gulf on the south both 
enter as elements of supreme importance to the general in- 
terests of this fortunate reg-ion. 

Internal commerce is provided with remarkable facilities. 
The heights of Minnesota, of the far Northwest, and of 
Western Pennsylvania are joined by three grand arteries of 
navigation in the centre of the Yalley, where the mighty 
stream of the Lower Mississippi invites intercourse with the 
south and the outside w<jrld. The singularly favored Upper 
Yalley would have suffered seriously in many ways but 
for the system of Great Lakes and their eastern relations. 
While the direction of its main slope and the Ohio and Upper 
Mississippi Rivers suggest its relations with the south, the 
7 97 



98 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

break in the Alleglianies through New York, the vast con- 
nected links of the lakes and their outlets, give the invitation 
to close commercial relations with the Atlantic Coast in the 
same latitude and distinguish the whole northern slope as 
highly for the most modern times as in tlie early and later 
geological ages. The lakes and the rivers insure an always 
important commerce. 

These water facilities for commerce, however, seem to be 
overshadowed at present by another ; its smooth, soft surface 
and wide levels remarkably adapt it to the development of the 
railway system. This was so readily and cheaply accom- 
plished, was so accommodating to the purposes and wants of 
the time, that the water-ways of the Valley were almost 
abandoned. Commercial facilities and the massing of coal, 
iron, and other useful metals in the Ohio Yalley and Lake 
regions encourage manufactures in a way quite extraordinary. 
The presence of a large population, the position midway 
between the two oceans, the cheapness of material from its 
nearness and abundance, and the ready facilities for cheap 
distribution — all which must have a great effect to cheapen 
the price of the articles manufactured — adapt the Valley sin- 
gularly to this form of industry. It is the natural center of 
a great people. It has ready relations with civilized Europe 
by Eastern ports, and with the teeming millions of Asia by 
the Pacific Coast. It has the closest and most important 
relations with the West Indies and tropical America across 
the Gulf and the Carribean Sea from the mouth of the 
Mississippi and the Gulf ports and by the Orinoco and Am- 
azon Rivers and the future ship canal across the Isthmus of 
Panama. Under all these stimulants the Valley must develop, 
in time, immense activity in numerous branches of trade. 
Wo region can expect to approach it in greatness in these 
respects, when its ca"jiabilities are fairly unfolded. 

But however great the Valley may yet become by com- 
merce and various industries from its natural facilities for 



AGRICULTURE TAKES THE LEAD. \)'J 

them, its advantageous relations and its position, its agricul- 
ture must always be most prominent and profitable. It is 
the true home of this industry. All the Geological Periods 
worked intelligently and continuously to concentrate here the 
rocks that should supply the necessary earthy and chemical 
materials for the formation of a durable soil, and later aires 
took care that they should be finely pulverized and well dis- 
tributed. With this Ibuadation agriculture may be developed 
to any desirable extent. This industry is the base of the 
social and business structure. Man's first and constant ne- 
cessity is food. With an insufficient measure of this in any 
region all other activities must be put in motion to collect it 
from more favored localities. Wherever it is produced in 
unrestrained abundance the wealth of other regions must 
flow. 

Branches of manufacture, lines of commerce and trade, 
and the valuable products of mining are sul)ject to fluctu- 
ations because they may be over-worked or tind competitors 
with great readiness. As a source of income they have not 
the steadiness of agriculture for this reason, and because they 
deal more largely in tliQ supply of the secondary and artificial 
wants of mankind. These, indeed, by habit, seem soon to 
become necessaries of life; yet, when financial pressure arises 
the primary demands of life are undisturbed, while these 
acquired wants retreat into the background, and disaster and 
distress spread through the classes whose income depends on 
the prosperity of the industries which supply them. No 
people can be .poor with whom the most solid fruits of the 
soil are abundant. Experience soon shows them that they 
can be comfortable on what the earth produces, and vvhatever 
excess of this produce remains to them is fairly sure of a 
market. 

This excess of agricultural products in the Valley can 
scarcely be said to have any conceivable limit. The measure 
of results from cultivation of the soil here has been as yet 



100 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ridiculously small compared with its absolute capacity, al- 
though the grains annually produced have long been counted 
by thousands of millions of bushels. The per cent of surface 
actually devoted to growing crops in the most thickly settled 
and oldest parts of the Valley is, perhaps, in no case over 20 
to '25, and much the larger part of the surface has been settled 
recently and thinly, or not at all. Some recapitulation of 
the geological origin and quality of the soil of the different 
sections will best convey a general idea of the agricultural 
possibilities of the Yalley. 

The eastern Valley north of the Ohio, the upper Missis- 
sippi, and the region some distance west of the Missouri in 
the same latitude to the southeastern part of Dacotah was, 
with some adjoining parts, the original floor completed and 
raised at the elevation of the Alleghany Mountains, about the 
beginning of the Mesozoic, or Middle Period. It had been 
carefully protected during the long Palaeozoic Period, which 
included about two thirds of geological time, and had been 
extremely abundant in the shell tish whose limestone cover- 
ings had been secreted from the waters by the Life Force in 
these animals. For this reason the shells were easily broken 
up into fine dust when the animals died, and limestone rock 
was principally composed of this material. When not 
hardened and compacted by heat, great pressure, or some 
peculiar chemical cement this limestone would be dissolved 
by " weathering," or crushed by the vast glaciers of the 
Great Ice Age into the very fine dust suitable to be taken 
up by plants to aid in their structure. 

The presence of animal and vegetable life in such profusion 
in this part of the Valley for such imniense periods of time 
also collected in the forming rocks most valuable material to 
enrich vegetable growth when they were worn down and 
spread abroad as soil. Add to this, that on the north, much 
of the east, some spots through the center, and generally over 
this part of the Valley before, after, and during the Coal- 



TIIK SOILS OF TlIK UPPKR VALLEY. 101 

makiiio- Ao-e, vast quantities of luud. gathered from tlie finer 
iriaterial of different rocks by atmospheric inlluences and min- 
o'led with the remains of vegetable and animal life of the 
land and marshes, formed vast layers of loose, shaly rock. 
This was " weathered down " on the hills, or ground by the 
ice, and helped to furnish rich supplies for vegetable growth 
all over the Valley, but more especially over the prairie States 
and in the river bottoms. 

As the finer, lighter and richer parts of this material re- 
mained loug in suspension in the waters during the Cham- 
plain and Terrace Epochs it was largely diffused over the sur- 
face of the northern Valley. The shallow lakes on the prairie 
levels received and deposited it. Sometimes, by the dam- 
ming up of streams, wide-spreading lakes would be formed 
where this material was brought in such abundance as to fill 
them with this valuable Loess, or bluff soil. The shallow 
lakes became marshes and gradually filled up with a rich loam 
supplied bv its decaying vegetation. Where the drift was not 
lodged, or where this fine surface deposit failed to be laid or 
was washed away from the surface, enough was mixed with 
thegi-avel to form a fine soil, or the shaly and limestone rocks 
of the hills were dissolved by the atmosphere to furnish plant 
supplies — as in Kentucky and Tennessee. 

This preparation was completed by long centuries of vege- 
table growth and decay, by the life and death of innumerable 
herds <^f animals, large and small. This formed a rich, often 
deep, surface mold which made the Valley a garden for pro- 
ductiveness when the Mound Builder or civilized farmer came 
to cultivate it. 

This was the condition of the soil of the old "Northwest 
Territory," between the Upper Mississippi and the Ohio, of 
Iowa, most of Minnesota, Nebraska, North Missouri and the 
northeast corner of Kansas. Over all this region, to which 
parts of Kentucky and Tennessee are to be added, there is a 



102 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

boundless possibility of agricultural wealth and very little 
poor land. 

The plains between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains 
lay for long periods as a region of lakes and marshes; their 
rocks were soft and rich in material required for vegetation. 
It was very heavily washed down during the process of ele- 
vation, but still contains in places all the depth and richness 
of the soil of Illinois and Indiana, and the conditions of agri- 
cultural wealth in general if sufficient moisture were supplied.. 
The Southern Yalley, or Gulf Slope, was chiefly formed in 
later geological time. The Valley of the Lower Mississippi 
is largely tilled with rich materials brought down from the 
upper Valley after the Glacial Epoch. The Cretaceous or 
chalk-making. era laid heavy deposits which, though not chalk 
proper, appear to have been formed at the bottom of a deep 
sea from an ooze composed mainly of minute animals whose 
light shells produce a rock having excellent fertilizing quali- 
ties. The cotton of the south is largely raised on this belt. 
As the rocks of the extreme south in general are of compar- 
atively-recent formation, they are usually soft and fine. The 
washings from the land at the north, northeast and northwest 
formed much shale, or mud rock, that supplies a soft and fer- 
tile soil. Valuable fertilizing marls and green sand, shell 
rocks, lime, sandstones and clays are also found there. The 
coast of the Gulf l)ack a hundred miles in Alabama, and still 
more, sometimes, amounting to two hundred miles further 
west, was formed in the Tertiary epochs just before the great 
Ice Age, and therefore in the latest rock-making geological 
times. The soil is consequently varied more largely in fertile 
qualities than in the other sections, but its rocks being mostly 
soft, the warm climate and abundant rainfall help to make the 
most of the soils they produce. Texas has a large displaj'- of 
cretaceous rocks and limestones, both of which, being chiefly 
of animal origin, are a fine base for fertility. 

No region in the world can show a soil so carefully prepared^ 



HOW TIIK SOIL IS AIDED BY (CLIMATE. 103 

through vast geological times, with all the most valuable 
mineral and chemical supj)lies for ]>lant-life, and these so well 
mixed and widely distributed, as that part of the valley which 
became permanently dry land early in the Mesozoic pei-iod; 
that is, comprising the original '' Northwest Territory," and 
the adjacent parts west of the Mississippi and south of the 
Ohio. Its abundance naturally overflowed to a large extent 
into the southern basin, and much of the surface of the plains 
was washed down the same way. Thus the real possibilities 
of agriculture throughout the Valley, but especially in the 
northern and central sections, are wliolly above estimate so 
far as real capacity of soil is concerned. 

This is admirably seconded by the climate. The opening 
of the Valley to the south and the direction given to cloud- 
bearing winds by the high lands and plateaus of Central 
America and Mexico furnish the stimulus of heat and moisture 
required to call out these resources. The northern and west- 
ern parts of the Valley are tempered by the great lakes, by 
winds from the north and the mountains, and a winter wdiicli 
wholly rests vegetation for several months in the year-. This 
is varied through many degrees of latitude and longitude and 
by great diflferences of precipitated moisture, or rainfall, and 
various other circumstances. In the south there is almost 
tropical heat tempered by abundant moisture, by winds usually 
from the sea, by the Alleghanies on the northeast, and the 
elevations toward the Rocky Mountain plateau on the north- 
west of that basin. The position and the latitude, the relation 
of the Atlantic and the Gulf to the Valley, of the mountains, 
the lakes, and the depression north toward the pole, all tend 
to secure desirable features of climate, either to moderate ex- 
tremes or to render them a special benefit. 

Tables of temperature and rainfall, averaged from the obser- 
vations of many years, by scientific observers, are here giv^en. 
The average temperature and moisture of each section of the 
country during each of the four seasons, and also for the year, 



104 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

are recorded, and maj be considered satisfactory as a general 
guide. It has become evident, however, to careful local obser- 
vers west of the Missouri, that the extensive settlement of 
those regions in recent years is producing marked and most 
beneficial changes in the amount of yearly rainfall; it steadily 
increases as cultivation and treeplanting progress. The shock 
given to the atmosphere by railway trains and the influence 
of all the changes wrought by active settlement on its electric 
conditions are believed to be important agents in promoting 
an increase of rainfall where it was before often insufficient 
for all the purposes of agriculture. 



TABLES OF TEMPERATURE. 



105 



TABLE OF TEMPERATURES IN THE UNITED STATES. 



STATIONS. 


ALT. 

Feel. 


SPRING. 


SUMMER 


aut'mn 


WINTER 


TEAR 


Toronto Canada 


341 

20 

20 

71 

267 

23 

130 

506 

60 

600? 

78 

20 

20 

00 

25 

10 

00 

800? 

450 

550 

1,131 

700? 

627 

600 

591 

591 

550? 

820 

1,000? 

896 

1,147 

2,360 

4,519 

4,351 

2,663 

6,418 

6,846 

120 

50 

50 

402 

350 

50 

50 


41.1 
42.8 
43.2 
44.3 
45.0 
48.7 
46.7 
44.6 
50.6 
50.0 
54.2 
65.8 
68.6 
78.0 
70.1 
70.0 
78.0 
62.4 
54.1 
54.3 
49.1 
45.5 
38.5 
37.6 
42.3 
44.9 
50.5 
45.6 
54.8 
53.8 
56.5 
46.8 
46.8 
51.7 
49.9 
48.3 
49.7 
72.1 
57.0 
59.2 
62.8 
5:5.0 
51.1 
40.0 


64.8 

65.2 
64.4 
68.6 
68.6 
72.1 
70.0 
67.6 
71.0 
71.6 
73.1 
80.6 
81.6 
81.5 
82.7 
82.3 
82.5 
79.1 
76.2 
73.0 
70.2 
66.3 
60.8 
62.0 
67.3 
67.3 
73.2 
70.6 
74.9 
74.1 
77.2 
71.5 
71.9 
75.9 
72.8 
67.3 
70.4 
90.0 
60.1 
72.8 
85.5 
70.3 
61.6 
54.2 


46.6 
48.1 
49.0 
50.1 
48.7 
54.5 
50.0 
48.9 
52.1 
51.1 
53.9 
68.1 
69.8 
78 7 
71.0 
70.7 
70.2 
61.3 
55.4 
55.0 
48.4 
48.4 
43.0 
43.5 
50.1 
48.8 
53.1 
45.9 
55.3 
53.7 
60.2 
49.3 
50.3 

44.5 
48.3 
50.6 
75.7 
60.1 
613 
66.4 
52.2 
53.7 
43.9 


24.5 
24.7 
26.6 
26.2 
24.7 
31.4 
26.0 
27.0 
32.6 
30.1 
33.9 
51.7 
54 9 
71.9 
57.3 
56.5 
53.8 
43.9 
32.3 
32.9 
28.8 
25.3 
21.8 
18.3 
26.0 
25.9 
26.3 
16.1 
33.0 
29.6 
32.4 
23.0 
31.1 
32.1 
85.4 
32.6 
31.6 
56 8 
51.5 
46.3 
49.3 
35 6 
42.4 
32.2 


44.3 


Portland, Me 

Portsmouth, N. H 


45.2 
45.8 


Cambrid<Te, Mass - 


47.3 


Amherst, Mass 


46.7 


New York Citj'' 


51.7 


Albany, N. Y 


48.2 


Rochester, N. Y 


47.0 


Philadelphia, Pa 


51.6 


Gettysburo^, Pa 


50.7 


Washington City 


53.8 


Charleston, S. C 


66.6 


Pensacola, Fla 


68.7 


Vera Cruz, Mexico 


77.5 


Mobile, Ala 


70.3 


New Orleans, La 


69.9 


Galveston, Texas. 


69.4 


Fort Towson, I. T 


61.7 


St. Louis, Mo 


54.5 


Cini^innati, 0-- 


53.8 


Hudson, 0.. 


49.1 


Ann Arbor, Mich 


46.4 


Fort Wilkins, Lake Superior 

Fort Brady, Lake Superior 

Milwaukee, Wis 


40.1 
40.4 
46.4 


Chicaa^o, 111. 


46.7 


Fort Madison, Iowa. 


50.8 


St. Paul's, Minn 


44 6 


Fort Scott, Kansas 


54.5 


Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 

Fort Rile}', Kansas 


52.8 
56.6 


Fort Kearney, Neb. _ 


47.7 


Fort Laramie, Neb 


50.1 


Great Salt Lake 




Fort Benton, Upper Mo 

Fort Union, Texas 


48.3 
49.1 


Santa Fo, New Mexico 


50.6 


Fort Yuma, Col.. 


73.6 


San Francisco, Cal. 


57.2 


Sacramento, Cal 


59.9 


Fort Miller, Cal 


66.0 


Dalles of Columbia. 


52.8 


Astoria, Oreiron 


52.5 


Sitka, Alaska 


42.6 



106 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



ANNUAL PRECIPITATION OF BAIN AT DIFFERENT STATIONS IN 
THE UNITED STATES. 



STATIONS. 



Toronto, Canada 

Portland, Me 

Portsmouth, N. H 

Cambridge, Mass 

Amherst, Mass 

New York Citj^ 

Albany, N. Y. 

Rochester, JM. Y 

Philadelphia, Pa 

Gettysburg, Pa 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 

Washington, D. C 

Charleston, S. C 

Vera Cruz, Mexico 

Pensacola, Fla 

Mobile, Ala 

New Orleans, La 

Jackson, Miss 

Fort Jessup, La 

FortTowsou, I.T. 

St. Louis, Mo 

Cincinuati, O 

Hudson, O 

Ann Arbor, Mich 

Mackinac, Mich. 

Fort Brady, Mich. 

Milwaukee, Wis. 

St. Paul, Minn. 

Fort Madison, Iowa 

Fort Scott, Kansas 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas . 

Fort Riley, Kansas 

Fori Kearney, Neb 

Fort Laramie, Neb 

Fort Union, Texas 

El Paso, New Mexico 

Santa Fe, New Mexico 

Fort Yuma,Cal 

San Francisco, Cal 

Sacramento, Cal. 

Fort Miller, Cal 

Astoria, Oregon 

Steilacoora, Wash. Ter 

Dalles ol Columbia. 

Sitka, Alaska 



7.1G 

12.11 

9.03 

10.85 

10.23 

11.53 

9.79 

6.62 

10.97 

9.74 

9.38 

10.45 

8.60 

31.90 

12.86 

14.24 

11.29 

10.90 

13.68 

15.55 

12.30 

12.14 

9.76 

7.30 

4.67 

5.44 

6.60 

6.61 

15.30 

12.57 

7.97 

7.91 

1080 

8.69 

2.47 

0.70 

2.83 

27 

7.50 

7.01 

9.57 

16.43 

11.19 

2.63 

18.32 



9.57 

10.28 

9.21 

11.17 

11.84 

11.33 

12.31 

8.86 

12.45 

10.20 

9.87 

10.52 

18.68 

116.80 

18.69 

18.00 

17.28 

14,20 

10.94 

14.36 

14.14 

13.70 

8.87- 

11.20 

8.8S 

9.97 

9.70 

10.92 

15.90 

16.37 

12,24 

7.15 

12.05 

5.70 

9.62 

3.56 

8.90 

1.30 

0.09 

0.00 

0.02 

400 

3 85 

0.42 

15.75 



aut'mn 


WINTER 


10.33 


4.29 


11.93 


10.93 


8.95 


8.38 


12.57 


9.89 


11.39 


9.70 


10.30 


9.63 


10.27 


8.30 


9 38 


5.38 


10.07 


10.06 


9.77 


9.10 


8.23 


7.48 


10.16 


11.07 


11.61 


9.40 


51.40 


5.50 


13.71 


11.72 


13.91 


18.27 


9.62 


12.71 


9.50 


1840 


9.74 


11.49 


12.23 


8.94 


8.94 


6.94 


9.90 


11.15 


6.16 


8.00 


7.00 


3.10 


7.01 


3.31 


10.76 


5.18 


6.80 


4.20 


5.98 


1.92 


14.5) 


4.70 


8.39 


4.79 


7.33 


2.75 


5.58 


1.26 


3.82 


1.31 


3.96 


1.63 


5.12 


203 


5.25 


1.70 


6.02 


2.08 


0.86 


0.72 


2.96 


11.34 


6 61 


12.11 


2.80 


9.79 


21.77 


44 15 


15 83 


22.62 


3.78 


6.98 


32.10 


23.77 



31.35 
45.25 
35.57 
44.48 
43.16 
42.23 
40.67 
30.44 
43.56 
38.81 
34.96 
41.20 
48.29 
183.20 
56.98 
64.42 
50.90 
53.00 
45.85 
51.08 
42.32 
40.89 
32.79 
28.60 
23.87 
31.35 
27.20 
2).43 
50.50 
42.12 
30.29 
21.90 
27.98 
19.98 
19.24 
11.21 
19 83 
3.15 
21.95 
25 73 
22.18 
86.35 
53.49 
1381 
89.94 



THE LAW OF VARIATION IN RAINFALL. 107 

In the lower Yalley and in the densely wooded regions the 
rainfall is large for all the seasons, and the difference for the 
seasons not very great; but when the point is reached where 
the average fall of the year begins to decrease, in aljout the 
same degree does the amount of precipitation for the fall and 
winter diminish, leaving the spring and summer rainfall 
tolerably near a constant quantity. This law applies par- 
ticularly to the region between western Indiana and the 
mountains. It, however, requires a broad average both of 
surface and of years, there being important variations for 
special localities and years. But for this law of rains the vast 
plains of the upper western Valley would be a real desert. 
Were the rains there equally distributed through all the sea- 
sons the amount falling in the productive seasons would not 
be sufficient for tlie grasses and grains. 

Precipitation of rain m'ay be materially increased by plant- 
ing trees. They do not refuse to grow when introduced and 
cared for by man, and a considerable modification in the dry- 
ness of the western regions is possible. The long rivers that 
flow from the mountains across these dry plains to the cen- 
tral Yalley furnish the means of irrigating over a large por- 
tion of the best lands, which, with attention to forest growth, 
will ultimately introduce very great and favorable changes in 
the extreme west and northwest of the Yalley. 

Russia, in Europe, and the Yalley of the Amazon, in South 
America, have points in common with the Mississippi A^ alley, 
and are destined to exert a great influence on the future of 
raankirid. It will be interesting to compare them and see in 
what points our Yalley excels. 

Russia is a vast plain, stretching from the Arctic Ocean to 
the Black Sea. It has, to some extent, the character of a 
shallow trough, there being mountains on the east and higher 
regions at the north and south of its western boundary, with 
an opening between, which includes the Baltic Sea and the 
Northern Plains of Germany. On the southeast the Ural 



108 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Mountains melt into a plain that extends across Siberia. From 
north to south, through 2,000 miles, there is a gradual descent 
to the Black Sea. The extreme north has an arctic climate 
and vegetation ; below that is a vast forest, more or less 
marshy. A cold and rigorous climate extends far down the 
slope. The lower half is largely occupied by treeless plains 
called steppes — closely resembling the prairies of the Missis- 
sippi Yalley. 

Instead of being a grand unity in diversity, in which the 
north and south temper each other, it is rather an assemblage 
of contrasts. Dry and warm in the south, it is wet and cold 
in the north. The geological formations have as little unity. 
The best soil is in the lower interior, and not in the best 
region to secure the largest results. There are many long 
streams flowing southward, but not in a single system, with a 
great central trunk, like the Mississippi. It has very great 
resources, part of the soil being extremely fruitful and very 
little of it absolutely barren, but it fails to be well distributed. 
It has great mineral resources in the Urals and large quan- 
tities of coal, but far away from the most populous regions 
and commercial centers. Thus with great advantages are 
coupled embarrassing extremes and difficulties of position 
and relations not known in the Great Yalley. 

The Yalley of the Amazon is more than a third larger than 
that of the Mississippi proper, and excels it in the unity and 
extent of its river system. It descends gently 3,000 miles 
from the watershed of the Andes to the Atlantic. Some of 
the head waters of the Amazon are said to be within 60 miles 
of the Pacific shore. It has a fertile soil and is provided with 
a deep and soft layer of fine earth over its upper rocks, be- 
lieved by Agassiz the product of a vast glacier, like that which 
furnished the drift of our upper Yalley. This is donbted by 
other geologists, but it is remarkably useful however ])roduced. 
This great Yalley is extremely well watered ; the cloud-bearing 
winds from the Atlantic, entering its eastern opening, de- 



THE VALLEY OF THE AMAZON. 109 

posit their precious burden over its whole extent,and yield 
their last reserve to the chill air of the Andes, whence it 
flows in innumerable streams down the fertile slope to swell 
the Amazon. The relations of this Valley with the Basin 
of the Orinoco, on the north, are such as almost to unite the 
two, and the pampas and llanos of the northern and southern 
interior find a natural outlet by the Amazon. 

It is extremely fruitful, the soil being abundantly good. 
But with all these extreme advantages, and others that might 
be mentioned, it must be ranked below the Valley of the 
Mississippi by its very exaggerations. It lies under the 
equator through its greatest length, and though described as 
more moderate in temperature and healthfulness than might 
be expected, it has an eternal summer, and the vegetable 
kingdom displays a power and luxuriance that will long remain 
uncontrolled by man. Abundant moisture, abundant heat, and 
a consequent extremely rich and stimulating vegetable mold 
unfit it, for the most part, for the production of concentrated 
fruits and grains. Tropical fruits, valuable woods, andinany 
extraordinary medicinal and economical products abound. It 
furnishes much that is of value to general commerce, but 
nature is not controllable. She has, as it were, taken the bits 
between her teeth. She is here wild and untamable, to a 
large extent, and declines the faithful service to man that is 
so eminent a feature of the sister Valley of North America. 
She furnishes remarkable sources of wealth to a civilization 
firmly established and harmoniously developed by the help 
of a wide range of the most useful resources and under the 
invigorating climate of the temperate zone. The enervating 
heat, the spontaneous fruits which supply nearly all the 
immediate necessities of man with little labor, and the 
diflficulty of acquiring any measure of control over the energies 
of nature render this extraordinary Valley unfavorable to the 
develo])ment of the elements of civilization. It depresses in- 
stead of stimulating the mental and moral energies lodged in 



110 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

humanity. It was a magnificent inheritance for the Portu- 
guese, but has embarrassed rather than aided their progress 
during the three hundred years and more that it has been in 
their possession. 

All things considered, the Yalley of the Mississippi has 
many points of great superiority to any other region in the 
world. In particular things some regions are more highly 
favored ; but for the avoidance of extremes in every point of 
view, united with the most solid and comprehensive resources, 
it is unrivalled. The v^alue of these is enhanced by such a 
location as to greatly assist the progressive development of 
the highest form of civilization known to man. The climate, 
the Lake and River systems and the Gulf unite with the form 
of the Valley, the structure of the mountains, the general 
relations to other ])arts of the continent and the WT)rld, to give 
the greatest possible value to the products of its soils and 
mines. 

All these circumstances combined with the social and po- 
litical condition of Europe to select for it, at the right time, 
the most desirable population that could have been found. 
Industrious, intelligent and enterprising, they brought the 
mature results of European civilization and thought to the 
development of the institutions and industries of this broad 
and rich alluvial plain. These fortunate coincidences tend to 
make the most of all the resources of the Yalley, but espe- 
cially of its agricultural capacities. They are seen to offer a 
solid foundation for national development. Every other form 
of industry is more or less fluctuating; this is steady and sure. 
Its slow and laboi'iously earned gains exert a more healthy 
influence on character than the alternate profusion and pain- 
ful..straits — the ebb and flow of success — in commerce, man- 
ufactures, and trade. 

Abundance is easily secured without excessive, slavish toil, 
yet requires steady physical application, under the direction 
of intelligence, in a healthy and inspiring climate. A mine 



ITS AGRICULTUKAL RESOURCES. Ill 

of the precious metals, a branch of manufacture, a line of 
commerce may, by intelligent energy and skill, soon be ex- 
hausted with great temporary results ; but a painful, disorgan- 
izing reaction follows. The agricultural resources of the 
Valley are for all time, and useless beyond the immediate 
supply of human wants — a steady perennial spring, to become, 
in time, a powerful stream for the comfort of mankind. 



CHAPTEK X. 

THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THE FIRST MEN IN THE VALLEY. 

When the Age uf Ice drew to its close the Ohamplain 
Period opened. The indications are that during the Glacial 
Period the northern part of the continent was raised at least 
some hundreds of feet higlier than now. This elevation was 
followed by a sinking of the same regions, or, at least, of all 
that lay below the northern border of Lake Superior, several 
hundred feet lower than now. It was as if Mother Nature 
filled her lungs and emptied them again, causing a measured 
rise and fall of her bosom. The St. Lawrence Valley was an 
arm of the sea far up toward Lake Ontario, and salt-water 
stood some hundreds of feet deep over Montreal. Lake 
Ohamplain was an interior sea, visited by whales, while huge 
animals, among them the mammoth, browsed on its banks 
and left their bones in its marshes. 

Both in this country and in Europe multitudes of very 
large and very ferocious animals made their appearance in 
this Age of the Drift — often called the Ohamplain Peri(td, 
because it has been most carefully studied near that Lake — 
and at this time the first traces of man are found on each con- 
tinent. It was a period of fresh-water overflow from the 
melting ice, of lakes and marshes in the Valley, and the re- 
mains of animals were buried in the drift as it was distributed 
by the surging floods. The traces of man in this period are 
very numerous in Europe, and are not wanting in America, 
though not so fully studied here. 

Many facts have been collected which seem to leave no 
doubt that men lived in the Yalley when the mammoth, the 
mastodon, the lion, the tiger, and other large and ferocious 

112 



THE FIRST MKM K\ TIIK VALLEY. 113 

animals, since extinct, roamed over the highlands, and were 
mired in the marshes. "Big-bone Lick," in Kentucky, 
acquired its name from tlie numbers of the immense animals 
whose remains were entombed tliere. In a similar spot near 
the Osage River, in Missouri, the bones of some eighty or 
more distinct animals have been found. Among these were 
found several arrow-heads of human manufacture. One was 
heneath the bones of a mammoth entombed fifteen feet below 
the surface in a mass of drift. 

In another part of tlie same state the indications were very 
plain that one of these huge animals was mired in the presence 
of men, who attacked it with flint-tipped arrows, spears, and 
stone axes, when, finding the animal helpless but tenacious of 
life, they built a fire around its head and desti-oyed it, after 
which the spot, with all these proofs of human presence, was 
covered by drift and soil. Numerous marks of a similar kind 
have l^een found at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. In the 
Mississippi delta, below New Orleans, a human skeleton was 
found heneath two successive forests of cypress. Many other 
indications, within and without the Valley, go to confirm the 
same point. The shell-heaps of Florida and California are as 
significant as the '' Kitchen-middings" of Denmark. 

So far as the general tone of these indications can now be 
estimated, they are fully in keeping with later developments. 
The early European man progressed steadily, so that four dif- 
ferent stages of approach to civilization are seen to stand out 
w^ith great distinctness. They are characterized by the arms 
and tools of each period as the Rude Stone Age, tlie Polished 
Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. 

These distinctions are not as sharp and clear in America, 
but there is a marked resemblance. The implements, indi- 
cated by tlieir ])osition in the drift as the oldest on this conti- 
nent, are rude. The Mound Builders belonged to the Polished 
Stone Age, and the Peruvians reach the development of the 
Bronze Age; but the Iron Age was introduced ])y Europeans. 
8 



114 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The movement toward civilization here was slower and had 
some very weak sides where that of the Old World came out 
strong. It can not well be doubted, however, that the Yallej 
was inhabited as early as the western part of Europe ; that 
the start was from the same point of rudeness; and that pro- 
gress was only made by select races under favoring circum- 
stances. The Indians were always savages, and it is unlikely 
that the first men in the Valley tended toward civilization. 

Whence came the first inhabitants of America? It is a 
question that has awakened great interest, and the books that 
have been written on it are to be counted by thousands. It 
has been, and is still, a general impression that the human 
race originated in Asia. Many courses of inquiry indicate 
the highlands near the Caspian Sea as the point from which 
dispersion commenced for the Old World races; but the more 
closely the Aborigines and ancient monuments of America are 
studied, the more diflicult does it seem to make out their 
origin. Books have been wyitten to prove their descent from 
almost every leading race in Asia and Europe; but the more 
exact studies of recent science show that they have no de- 
tailed likeness with any, and that their separation — if that 
took place — must have been accomplished before the original 
stock had made any important or permanent progress. In 
color, languages and features of character, viewed as a whole, 
they are a class apart, while the Old World has ybwr well- 
marked classes. 

After these first traces of man there seems 'to be, as yet, a 
long blank during which, in Europe, the record is apparently 
continuous; but that was a region of limited and favorable 
areas surrounded with barriers which protected dawning im- 
provement, while America permitted wide dispersion. This 
circumstance was highly unfavorable to steady advance. 
There was too wide a range over a region abundant in spon- 
taneous gifts to man, which, in temporary want or danger, per- 
mitted easy migration to better supplies and greater security. 



Till-: MOUNDS ANM) TIIKIK lUJILDKKS. 115 

It is not probable that American civilization commenced in 
the Valley. There are dim traces of its begiunin*^ in the 
northern parts of South America, near the Andes or among 
them, and in the confined regions of Central America. 
Thence, so near as can now be estimated, emigrated a people 
who had made the start in social organization that bound 
them too closely and strongly together to permit them to fall 
apart in the vast spaces of the Mississippi Valley. 

These people are called Mound Builders. The Valley con- 
tained an immense number of mounds, maiidy heaps of the 
loose earth and soil, but occasionally entirely or partially 
composed of stone, with a few instances of supporting sur- 
faces of sun-dried briek. The whole number found has been 
estimated at 100,000, more than 10,000 of which were in 
the State of Ohio, where they were studied by competent 
men of science more extensively and accurately than else- 
where. Commencing on the head-waters of the Ohio they 
extended westward to Nebraska, from near the lakes to the 
Gulf, and from Texas to the Atlantic coast of Florida. They 
were mostly found in the fertile valleys of streams where the 
soil was richest and most easily worked; seldom in the interior 
or far distant from those parts of the branches of the great river 
system that could be navigated by canoes. They appear to 
have been constructed in greater nnmber and variety in the 
lower part of Ohio; were very numerous in the central Val- 
ley near the Mississippi ; and were more frequently of large 
size further south. They occupied what may be considered 
the very best parts of the Valley and those most easily acces- 
sible from the main streams by water. They varied somewhat 
in evident destination in diflerent sections, but bore the 
strongest marks, without and within, of a common origin. 

Their location, their size, the purpose evident in them and the 
relics they contained were found eloquent in descriptions of a 
period and a people wholly unknown to the modern Aborigi- 
nes. No other record of them has been found that is decisive 



116 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

in itself, although the traditions, monuments and history of 
the Indians contain some traces apparently pointing to them, 
and which help us to some interesting probabilities. Natural 
causes, working on so large a scale and with material so plia- 
ble as the surface of the Yalley, have often produced curious 
results, and it was formerly common to attribute all the 
mounds to geological causes that could not be referred to 
agency of the -Indian tribes; Init that idea has never been 
entertained by those who have made the more characteristic 
of them a careful study. The Mound Builders have been 
regarded as a myth only by those writers who had received 
imperfect information. 

AH the facts thus far gathered furnish unequivocal testi- 
mony to the existence in the Yalley at a period far back in 
the twilight of American time, and probably also during 
times that were pre-historic in the Old World, of a very 
numerous and considerably civilized population in the Yalley. 
This race was evidently one controlled by the same ideas and 
sympathies, fairly uniform in mental, moral and social culture. 
That culture was too low in kind to have led to results so 
extensive without settled institutions which must have been 
based on a strong and vigorously conducted government. The 
evidence is also fairly conclusive that there was a common 
bond between all the parts of this population which, at the 
grade of development they had reached, must have been a 
central government. There are many evidences of harmony 
and none of conflict with each other. War was prepared for 
only in one region, and as that was on the extreme border the 
dan O'er must have been from without. 

It is probable that this people vanished from the Yalley at 
about the time that authentic history began its records in 
Greece, and that their occupation of it covered both the 
Rude and Polished Stone Ages of European Pre-historic time. 
It was, apparently, a long occupation by a mild, peaceable 
race governed with vigor and considerable intelligence. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE LABORS OF THE MOUND BUILDERS, 

The active industry that has been employed about a hundred 
years in changing the surface of the Valley, as the Mound 
Builders left it, into a great center of civilization and enter- 
prise, has removed many of the monuments of this ancient 
race. The graves, the altars, and the temples were more nu- 
merous near many of the present centers of wealth and activ- 
ity than elsewhere. The good sense of these primitive men 
was apparently as sharp and clear to advantages of situation 
and value of soils as the many-sided intelligence of a more 
enlightened people. It is also another proof that they 
selected freely; that they were not troubled, for the most part, 
with enemies. They settled on the best lands, and evidently 
did not need to fear the vicinity of the natural highway — the 
rivers — which the Indians of later times commonly avoided 
with great care, as places of residence, because likely to bring 
enemies to the sudden i-uin of their towns. 

Thus, the remnant of ruins which the wasting eifect of a 
score and more of centuries had spared was, in large part, 
obliterated before their significance was properly understood. 
If these are added to the multitudes remaining and the other 
multitudes which the tooth of time had already devoured, we 
shall have a vast summary of toil invested by the Mound 
Builders in their works. They must have been a very numer- 
ous and industrious people. The mounds represent only the 
outlines and foundations of their public works. Their private 
dwellings, the structures of wood that surmounted, were en- 
closed by, or surrounded these remains, were too light and 
teinporary to be preserved. The labors of cultivation that 

117 



118 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

secured food for servants and attendants on these works, with 
all their painful toil in preparing tools under the greatest 
disadvantages, must have represented another iniiuense out- 
lay of human energj'. 

Of the nearly twelve thousand works remaining in Ohio, 
when the general critical examination was made in 1845-7, 
fifteen hundred were inclosures. These consisted of walls, 
sometimes miles in total length, surrounding — and sometimes 
surrounded by — mounds of various size and form, which, with 
modern facilities for moving earth, would represent the labor 
of thousands of men and animals for a great length of time. 
The inclosures and mounds have been classified as fortifica- 
tions, temples, altars, sepulchres, signal stations and symbolic 
figures. Yarious circumstances make the aim in their con- 
struction, and sometiiues their actual use after they were built, 
very evident to the student of them who makes the study with 
due intelligence and care. Too many have been explored with 
haste by persons who did not suspect the great importance of 
uncovering ancient buried relics with caution and leaving them 
in undisturl)ed position until an extensive observation had 
l)een made and recorded of their relation to each other and to 
their surroundings; for by these circumstances much of their 
significance is usually determined. They often reveal , the 
manner and the purpose of burial. 

More than thirt}' years of the nineteenth centuiy had passed 
before the investigations of men of science in Europe were 
directed to the buried traces of pre-historic man on that con- 
tinent, and the idea of gaining precise information from such 
studies was not fully accepted by high scientific authorities 
until some years after. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
these mounds, widely scattered in a new country where scien- 
tific experts were less numerous than in the Old World, should 
be little noticed, and never studied with sufficient carefulness 
to discover the right key to their revelations. They had not 
been unnoticed, however, and some extravagant tlieories con- 



THE SURVEY OF OHIO MOUNDS. 119 

cerning their origin had been based on superlicial observ^a- 
tions of tlieir appearance and the curious relics often found 
in them. These theories liad little value, because not founded 
on sufficiently minute and extended examination. 

In 1845 a careful survey of the mounds in Ohio was begun 
and continued for two j^ears, by thoroughly competent observ- 
ers, with a scientific care and accuracy that led to important 
conclusions. A description of these studies, that discarded 
vague suppositions and loose estimates and furnished detailed 
and accurate explanations of the leading features of the 
mounds and their contents, was published. Much interest 
was awakened in the scientific world, tlie mounds in all parts 
of the country were critically examined by suitable persons, and 
the information already gained was confirmed and extended. 

The information here given, and the interesting inferences 
drawn, are gathered from these scientific records. Their accu- 
racy can not be questioned, for as the number of thoroughly 
Trained observers has increased in recent years, the facts have 
been repeatedly re-studied and vei-ified. 

Some of the mounds were evidently military structures, 
designed for defence against enemies, most of the points forti- 
fied being selected with a judgment that would do honor to a 
modern engineer corps, and with a lavish display of labor and 
pains that is extremely significant. r(jrt Hill, Ohio, was a 
fortress of great strength, occuyiying the summit of a hill five 
hundred feet high on two of its sides, and surrounded with a 
wall along the edge of the hill, the materials for which were 
thrown up from a deep ditch dug around the brow. The wall 
and the ditch are more than a mile and a half in circuit and 
enclose an area of forty-eight acres. The wall, at the more 
accessible points, is said to be still from six to fifteen feet in 
height. When examined, it was covered with a heavy forest 
of gigantic trees, standing and fallen, and some of the latter 
could not have been less than a thousand years old. Large 
artificial reservoirs for water indicate that it was once pro- 
vided with all tlie means to stand a formidable sie^e. 



120 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Another defensive work, called Fort Ancient, on the Little 
Miami Kiver, had walls Xie2ir\y four miles in length, besides 
mounds, parallels and curtain walls. These were, when care- 
fully surveyed by a competent party from Cincinnati, eighteen 
to twenty feet high at exposed points, and the number of cubic 
yards of excavation made in constructing them was estimated 
at nearly seven hundred thousand. These are but what remain 
after the storms of perhaps thousands of years have done their 
best to diminish and wash them away. 

Another, in the Scioto Valley, embraces within its defenses 
an area of one hundred and twenty acres; a stream was turned 
out of its course to permit a complete circuit of wall; and 
it includes mounds which, with the walls, contain three mil- 
lion cubic feet of earth. Fortified and covered ways some- 
times lead from fortresses on heights to the streams below. 
Evidences of military foresight and skill in the art of defence 
are often very striking, and indicate mature reflection after 
extensive experience as well as command of unlimited labor 
for long periods. 

One military work included betwx^en 600,000 and 700,000 
cubic yards of earth thrown up; and the system of defenses at 
the mouth of the Scioto River is said to be at least twenty 
miles in total length, though embracing not more than two 
hundred acres of inclosure. These defensive works are usually 
on the points of bluifs in bends of rivers, or in the angle 
formed by the meeting of the streams. They are usually in 
the vicinity of numerous works of a different character, indi- 
cating the presence of a large population and a center of the 
community. They were evidently designed to form a pro- 
tection, and probably, as danger grew more threatening, 
became places of retreat for the inhabitants. Sometimes these 
inclosures are so extensive, and embrace so many mounds of 
various form and size, as to suggest that here was a walled 
town. 

A curious implication of foresight and ability in defence is 



MILITAny AND SACRKI) IXCT.OSURES. 121 

foniul in curtain aii<l parallel walls to protect openings or 
gates in the defenses, and to connect different structures. A 
long period of danger would seem to liave produced a military 
class and elaborate and intelligent precautions. This idea is 
supplemented bv the frequent occurrence of smaller works 
on the highest points, as if they were outposts of larger for- 
tresses; and of elevations on the highest hills with level tops 
and traces of fire — sites for beacon fires. If the forests were 
removed it is said these could be seen for many miles around. 
By means of these signal stations warning of the approach 
of danger could be transmitted over a laro:e reo-ion in a few 
minutes. 

These warlike indications are almost entirely confined to 
the northeast section of the Yalley, as if danger only threat- 
ened from the region lying between Lakes Erie and Ontario, 
and the mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania. The most 
warlike and vigorous race of Indian conquerors, the Iroquois, 
or Five jS^ations, M'ere found settled here in modern times. 
A few thousand resolute warriors intimidated half a continent 
by their expeditions from this point. 

Sacred inclosures are also numerous in the same region. 
They much more rarely occur further w^est, and especially 
south. These are commonly found on the broad and beauti- 
ful terraces of the river bottoms. They are of various sizes 
and forms — square, circular, elliptical and octagonal. The 
Newark Works cover hundreds of acres, and contain examples 
of all these various forms which are joined by connecting 
walled avenues into one system. 

A most interesting point in connection with this class of 
inclosures is that they are perfect squares or circles on a 
large scale. There is, also, a definite relation between the areas 
of different forms. These walls, constructed with so much 
mathematical precision, inclose mounds of various forms sym- 
metrically arranged. Unfortunately, all this is only sug- 
gestive — not explanatory. For tliat explanation we must 



122 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

probably look to the rock inoniiments of Central America 
and Mexico, which appear to indicate the purposes of such 
outlines. 

Temple mounds are leveled on the summit. They are of 
various sizes and forms, but usually are oblong squares with 
the corners pointing to the cardinal points of the compass. 
Commoidy tiieir summits are reached by griided ways. Some- 
times one or more terraces intervene between the general 
level and the summit, all connected together by these graded 
ways. Often smaller mounds are found on the top of plat- 
form, or temple mounds, of such form or contents as to sug- 
gest that they were, in some cases, the foundation of build- 
ings, in others, altars of sacrifice. These platform mounds 
were much more numerous, and generally larger, toward the 
south than in the northeast. 

The American Bottom in Illinois, opposite St. Louis, for- 
merly contained at least two hundred mounds, among which 
was the immense Cahokia Mound. It was 700 feet long at 
base, by 500 wide — nearly half a mile in circumference — and 
90 feet high. A graded way led to a terrace 300 feet long 
by 160 wide, and the summit was a platform 460 feet long 
by 200 wide. A conical mound of small dimensions but 10 
feet high contained bones, funereal vases and stone imple- 
ments. Four other smaller mounds, similar in form, stood 
near it on the level plain; but there was no inclosing wall. 
There is reason to believe that imposing religious rites were 
celebrated in the temples of which this vast mass was the 
foundation. The mounds were very numerous in this vicin- 
ity. St. Louis, the "Mound City," received its popular name 
from the number formerly covering jts site. 

The whole immediate Yalley of the Mississippi from this 
point, including the lower valleys of its tributaries, especially 
on the east side, was rich in mounds and other indications of 
a dense ancient population. Among them these truncated 
pyramids were very numerous. The Indian name of the 



TEMPLE MOUNDS OV THE SOUTH. 123 

Yazoo River means "The Eiver of Ancient Ruins." A 
mound near Florence, in tlie Valley of the Tennessee, was 
described thirty years ago as being built so that its corners 
exactly coincided with the cardinal points of the compass. It 
was about seventy feet high, and its base covered an acre of 
ground. A group of mounds in Chickasaw County, Missis- 
sippi, described by the same observer in 1847, was surrounded 
l>y a wall inclosing six acres of ground. 

The great mound at Seltzertown, Mississippi, was among 
the largest and most interesting. It was 600 feet long by 400 
feet wide at base. Its top, of four acres in extent, was reached 
by a graded way. The height of this immense pile was forty 
feet. Three small circular mounds stood on the top — one at 
each end and one at the center. Those at the ends were 
leveled at their summits. The corners of the great mound 
were about in harmony with the four principal points of the 
compass, the greater length being from east to west. The 
circular mound at the western extremity of the platform rose 
to the height of forty feet, that at the east being somewhat 
less. Traces of eight other mounds, at regular distances, were 
also visible on the broad platform. The north side of the 
lara:e mound was covered with a wall of sun-dried brick two 
feet thick, and supporting angular tumuli marked the corners 
which were covered by large bricks having on thein the print 
of human heads. Skeletons, vases, ashes and other evidences 
of burnt offerings, were found by Dr. Dickeson, the explorer, 
on the mound. A ditch, averaging ten feet in depth when 
examined, surrounded the huge mound. 

It would require volumes to note the descriptions that have 
been given of similar structures over the South. Although 
extremely numerous only in the neighborhood of the Missis- 
sippi and its eastern tributaries, they have been found across 
the whole Gulf slope to the Atlantic and a considerable dis- 
tance west of the Great River, and always giving rise to the 
same suggestions by similarity of features and contents. 



124 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The Sacrificial Mounds do not differ very much from Burial 
Mounds in external appearance, but u careful examination of 
the interior reveals a striking uidikeness and many interesting 
and suggestive points. Tiiey, so far as studied, more usually 
occur within inclosures, and have not been much noticed by 
explorers in the more Western and the Southern Yalley. 
This may, to some extent, arise from the fact that wide-spread 
critical examination by the same parties and those thoroughly 
competent, by long experience, for that class of inquiries, has 
been mostly confined to the upper part of the Valley. There 
have been a great number of excellent ol)servers in the south, 
but the field of each was restricted and they worked without 
concert with each other. It may, however, be fairly assumed 
that if they existed there they would have been noticed. The 
platform, or temple, mounds are few in the region where 
these altars are numerous, and where the altars are absent the 
temple mounds are the prevailing t}q3e. It may, therefore, 
be inferred that religious rites were chiefly practiced on these 
elevated platforms, where they existed, and in structures on 
them which have mostly disappeared under the wasting hand 
of time. 

Three circumstances characterize the altar mounds. They 
are within or near sacred places or other inclosures; they are 
always stratified in a peculiar way; and they contain symmet- 
rical platforms within, and generally not far above the origi- 
nal base of the mound, on which there are traces of fire and 
of various substances more or less perfectly consumed by it. 
A fourth may l)e mentioned : after frequent, and often evi- 
<lently long-continued, use they were covered with earth and 
became conical mounds. If this was not always the case the 
exceptions noted have been few. 

They are of various sizes and shapes, but symmetrical — 

^usually formed of burned clay which is often placed above a 

first layer of sand. A few were formed of stone. One was 

of round selected cobble-stones laid with much care and art. 



THE ALTAR OF SACRIFICE. 125 

In form the ])arts constituting tlie altar of sacrifice were 
roiiii(i, elliptical, square, or oblong. Some were barely two 
feet across the prepared altar, while otliers are stated to be 
iifty feet long by "fifteen wide. The usual diameter was 
found to be from five to eight feet. They were nearly all 
coin posed of iine clay, not found on the spot, which com- 
monly rested on the surface of the ground, the first elevation 
not greatly exceeding a foot. This clay is usually burned 
very hard through all or most of its depth. Where the evi- 
dence of fire was slight few remains were found. Frequently, 
after long-continued use had burned it out, more or less, a fresh 
coat of clay was added — in some cases this was done repeat- 
edly — and finally all was covered with earth, sometimes to a 
depth of ten or fifteen feet. The final burial of the whole 
with earth appears to have been made while the fire was still 
glowing, and thus many fragments of perishable material, 
after having become charred but not burned, were the more 
perfectly preserved. The burnt offerings made on these altars 
were exceedingly various, and must have included much that 
was most precious to the ancient worshippers. 

Human bones, more or less consumed, and sometimes en- 
tii'ely consumed and to be detected only by analysis of the 
ashes, w^ere quite commonly found. As the ashes often con- 
tain traces of consumed vegetables and charred maize, it is 
inferred that they made the ofi'ering of First Fruits to their 
deity — so common among the early nations of the Old World. 
In some cases the charred remains of cloth were found and a 
great variety of ornaments, weapons, tools and specimens of 
what must have been high art in those days, at least to 
them. 

On the banks of the Scioto River, in Ohio, near Chillicothe, 
was a sacred inclosure apparently devoted to altar worship. It 
contained thirteen acres, over which were distributed twenty- 
four mounds. One of these was one hundred and fort}- feet 
in length by sixty in greatest breadth. They all contained 



126 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

altars, on M^liich were the calcined remains of an extremely 
large number and variety of offerings. It is called " Mound 
City." A singular feature of these altars was that a different 
class of offerings was found in each. One contained hundreds 
of pipes and little else; another, pottery and copper or stone 
ornaments; another, shells; discs of hornstone, to the number 
of thousands, were found in one; some contained only a layer 
of ashes. A quarter of a mile distant from this was an in- 
closure of twenty-eight acres, with an outer fosse or ditch. It 
was evidently a walled town, and some ciix'umstances sug- 
gested that it once contained the residences of the priesthood 
attendant on the sacred inclosure near by. In the center of 
tliis defensive work was a sacrificial mound. The altar of this 
mound was very elaborately built. The base was of sand 
packed tight in an excavation made in the soil eight inches 
deep. This excavation was a circle thirteen feet in diameter, 
and burnt offerings of men or animals appear to have been 
made on this compacted sand. The ashes had been removed 
but the sand was discolored, apparently by fatty matter, and 
burned hard, so as to be black and strongly cemented on the 
surface. Another layer of sand was then laid over it of the 
same thickness but only seven feet in diameter, which was 
paved with round stones a little larger than a hen's egg, laid 
with the utmost precision- and firmly bedded in the sand. 
Ashes, apparently the cinders of a human body, rested on this 
pavement with two heaps of bracelets encircling some bones 
not quite reduced to ash — five bracelets in each. Two thick 
plates of mica were the only other ornaments found. These 
were first covered with a layer of sand and then the whole was 
covered with earth, forming a circular mound. Occasionally 
a " brick hearth," appearing to be one of these altars not yet 
covered over, seems to intimate that the ceremonies of the 
Mound Builders were suddenly interrupted and never resumed 
— very likely by the final catastrophe that drove them from 
their pleasant homes in the Valley. It thus appears that the 



THE KEVELATIONS OF THE ALTARS. i-i 

altar mounds were substitutes for the temples or platform 
mounds, on whose summits, as on the Mexican Teocallis and 
Peruvian Uuacas, religious rites were performed. These 
Mexican truncated pyramids, on one of which the captive 
companions of Cortez were offered in sacrifice, would now 
reveal few traces of the rites seen and recorded by the con- 
quertu- and his followers. These altars, so carefully buried, 
contain information that would without them have been wholly 
lost to us. How little would have remained, after two or 
three thousand years of neglect and decay to show the true 
character of Aztec civilization and religious rites, notwith- 
standing that their monuments were of more durable material 
than the mounds of the Yalley ! These altars, so carefully 
and suddenly buried in the very moment of the crisis finishing 
their ceremonies, aid to throw light on the forest-buried tem- 
ples of Uxmal and Palenque and other ancient cities of 
Central America, and show how the mound foundations of 
those edifices and the teocallis of Mexico originated. 

The mounds serving as tombs are extremely numerous in 
most parts of the Yalley. In the section that has been most 
critically examined, however, they seem to be less numerous, 
and, in general, they were probably the burial places only of 
the more distinguished of the people. The common mass of 
the population must have consisted of virtual slaves, who had 
neither the aspiration nor time to produce such costly tombs. 

A large part of these burials were accompanied by the use 
of fire. Cremation was extensively practiced by the Mound 
Builders. The sepulchral mounds are variable in size — from 
six to eighty feet in height. Sometimes a large one was sur- 
rounded ])y a group of smaller ones, and sometimes they 
crowd on one another and seem to overlap, as if to show more 
clearly the intimate relations of the group. Where fire has 
been employed it appears to have been covered still more sud- 
denly than that of the altars, while in full glow, so that often 
the charred coals of the wood, with few ashes, still remain. 



128 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

With the dead were also buried tlie personal ornaments of the 
deceased, and some of his more valued treasures. Necklaces 
of pearl, or beads made from shells, are sometimes found in 
great numbers, and where the body was not burned it is seen 
that they encircled the neck or arms of the corpse when it 
was interred. 

In some cases where the body was buried without burning 
we have a hint of the long time that has passed since the for- 
mation of the mound. In England skeletons known to liave 
been buried in "Barrows," as the ancient mounds are there 
called, 1,800 years ago, have been found whole and firm. This 
is rarely or never the case in the A^ alley in the driest and most 
favorable situations. On a point of the third terrace, about 
one hundred feet above the Scioto River, was a burial mound 
twenty-two feet high. The body had been protected by a rude 
sarcophagus of logs, with a floor of matting or boards. Of 
this wood only the cruml)led dust remained, although the dry 
compact earth still retained the cast of the logs, and the frame 
of the corpse turned to ashes at the first touch of the air. 
Several hundred beads, made from shells and the ivory tusk 
of some animal, had the appearance of being wrought by 
turning rather than by hand. The appearance of fire was, in 
this case, at some distance from the body, indicating some 
ceremony by fire other than that of cremation. 

The ornaments and other valuables buried with the dead 
must have been more costly and precious to them than gold 
would be to us. The material was usually brought from a 
great distance and wrought with infinite pains and great skill. 
It is remarked that the presence of warlike implements in the 
graves of the dead is a rare exception, which speaks volumes 
for their peaceable character and generally quiet life. The 
same absence of military signs and trophies has been noticed 
in the ruins of Central America. Often pieces of mica were 
disposed about the dead, sometimes pieces of cloth are not 
fully decayed, and feather garments have been found. 



THE CONTENTS OF BURIAL MOUNDS. 129 

But they did not always honor the dead by burying valued 
ornaments with them. Indeed, it is declared not to have been 
the case as a more general rule. Sometimes a multitude of 
bones are found in one mound; sometimes the bones of many 
persons are so disposed about the principal person or persons 
as to intimate that they were personal attendants or close 
friends, slain in their honor, as was done by the Peruvians and 
other nations. Urn burial was much practiced in the Central 
and Southern Valley, and often a simple sarcophagus of flat 
stones protects the remains. In a few such cases skulls have 
been preserved to make some interesting revelations concern- 
ing the mental qualities of the race. The "Grave Creek 
Mound," at the junction of Grave Creek with the Ohio, in 
West Virginia, has acquired much celebrity by its size and 
some of the significant circumstances connected with it. It 
w^as seventy feet high, nine liundred feet in circumference and 
liad two vaults — one thirty feet above the other. Two skele- 
tons were in the lower and more elaborate vault, one surrounded 
by beads, one hundred and fifty in number, and an ivory or 
bone ornament. The other had no ornaments. The single 
skeleton, in the upper vault, was accompanied by more than 
3,000 beads and other pieces of ornament. The largest num- 
ber of the burial mounds were small and the objects found 
with the human bones not very numerous. 

Many mounds appear to have been observatories or places 
for building signal fires; some are inexplicable, as yet; and 
many appear to be symbolic, though the idea to be conveyed 
is not very clear to us. They are mostly in regions outside 
the range of the mass of mounds. These are " animal 
mounds," so-called, representing birds, beasts and the human 
form in relief, on the level surface of the country. Most of 
them are found in Wisconsin, where they contain almost no 
relics, and it is difficult to imagine any reasonable cause for 
the expenditure of so much labor. Almost none of the kinds 
of mounds found elsewhere exist in their neighborhood. 
9 



130 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Several of these animal mounds are found in Ohio, where they 
appear to have had some important religious significance. 
One, the figure of a bird vi^ith outstretched wings, between 
one and two hundred feet in its two longest measurements, 
was located in the center of a sacred inclosure, and was evi- 
dently used as the altar of sacrifice. Of two others in difier- 
ent localities and on the summit of eminences, one was in the 
form of an alligator, two hundred and fifty feet long, and evi- 
dently originally finished with great nicety. The other rep- 
resented a serpent, fully one thousand feet long, with the jaws 
extended in the act of swallowing a huge object believed to 
represent an egg. These are probably all symbols of some 
thought, event, or object of especial veneration, but of what 
is uncertain. 

The few objects found in the Wisconsin mounds are exactly 
similar to those of other classes of mounds, and those of Ohio 
seem evidently wrought by the same hands that produced 
the others which abound in sight of them. Perhaps some 
clew may yet be found to their meaning. The serpent sym- 
bol was much used among the Peruvians. 

Thus it will be seen that the race of the Mounds did a vast 
amount of labor not connected with the necessities of daily 
life. Much of this work formed in the soft soil must have 
melted away, and perhaps shows as little of the original 
amount as the present ruins of Babylon display of the origi- 
nal vast magnitude of the City of Nebuchadnezzar. Life was 
far more orderly and laborious than with any American 
races known to us save those of Peru, Central America and 
Mexico, who, in some points, exceeded in the elaborateness 
of their civilization that of their European conquerors. 

A thorough examination of the character, habits, languages 
and traditions of Indians furnishes very complete proof that 
the mounds cohld not have been made by their ancestors. 
The tribes found in North America, though diiFering from 
each other in a multitude of subordinate ways, had very 



THE MOUNDS WERE NOT JSIADE BY INDIANS. 131 

striking general siiuilui'ities, and in none of them wer(^ tlie 
traits revealed by tlie nionnds of their bnihlers paralleled. 
Possibly a single exception should be made in the case of the 
Natchez; but they were few in number, and their tri1)al organ- 
ization was broken up before they had been much studied. 
It is said that their traditions referred their origin and former 
home to the borders of Mexico. At least they appear to have 
luid no history to give of the origin of the mounds. If they 
were a branch of the ancient Mound Builder race they must 
have been almost completely degenerate. 

The Indians were ([uite incapable of the vast labors which 
produced these structures, nor was there, from whatever side 
they were viewed, any trace of degeneracy or change of direc- 
tion in their qualities and manner of life. They were all of 
one piece, so to speak. Their social, political and traditional 
policies were harmonious, and showed them to be true chil- 
dren of nature; the original untutored and savage instinct was 
completely crystallized. They had no account to render con- 
cerning the mounds, and had in no respect an affinity for 
the condition of society under which they must have been 
produced. 

The Indians sometimes had fortifications, they had burial 
rites, occasionally they produced monuments and some few 
sculptures and works of art; but there was a wider difference 
between them and tlie products of tlie Mound Builders than 
between the last and the results of modern civilization. In 
those points relating to the absolute necessities of a hunter's 
life they had some skill, but in every other direction rudeness 
and simplicity were absolute. They were ver^^ strong in many 
of their mental traits, but strong precisely where the Mound 
Builders were weak, and that strength was all employed to 
resist progress toward civilization. No hint in institutions, 
in mental qualities, or in language, authorizes the supposition 
that their race could have been bent from its original wild- 
ness so as to develop a primitive civilization and then 



132 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

recover its original tone and quality. Had this been the 
case it would have been an anomaly in history. In fact, 
every known law of mental philosophy opposes the supposi- 
tion, as do also all the facts yet collected. 

The race of the Mounds much more resembles the early 
Chaldeans and Egyptians, while the Indians resemble more 
nearly, in several points, the nomads of Arabia, the indomit- 
able descendants of the hunter Esau, " whose hand was 
against every man." Only a race of slaves submitting quietly 
to absolute authority can be organized and compelled to pro- 
duce such vast and numerous monuments of a primitive 
people. 

A more favorable train of influences would perhaps have 
reproduced in the American Indian the history of the strong- 
willed and enterprising Teutonic race of Europe. But the 
American lacked the modifying elements which Western Asia, 
Southern Europe and Northern Africa exerted on the wan- 
derers of the Steppes and the rude warriors of the German 
forests. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHARACTER OF THE MOUND BUILDERS AND THEIR 
INSTITUTIONS. 

With the lapse of years, and by the increasing exactness and 
caution of investigation that has been noticed as a special 
feature of the last half-century, some indications of the mental 
condition of the Mound Builders have been fairly established. 
It required much study and care to distinguish between the 
skulls of the old Mound Builders and the modern Indians, 
who sometimes buried their dead in the mounds; but after a 
time these " intrusive burials," as they are called, were found 
to be so unlike the original ones as to be easily distinguished 
by a competent observer, and a very marked difference was 
noticed between the crania of the earlier and later race. By 
the persevering researches of able men many skulls, unques- 
tionably those of the Builders of the Mounds, have been col- 
lected, and the information they convey made out. 

They had a retreating forehead, and the mass of the brain 
was about as much less than that of the modern Indian as his is 
less than that of the modern European. The Mound Builders 
were not an intellectual race. It was long questioned whether 
this low forehead was not due to the fashion of applying 
external pressure to it in infancy, as has been practiced by 
the Flathead Indians and some other American tribes; but the 
conclusion has been reached that this was not the case. 
Sculpture in the ancient ruins of Central America reveals the 
same type of head, and various facts intimate that it was 
the natural form of the skull. On the other hand, the distri- 
bution of the brain, which has much to do with the tendencies 
and capabilities of character, were favorable. The arrange- 

133 



134 THE MISSISSIPPI VAIXET. 

ment of the brain in the European favors the intellectual 
faculties; in the Indian brain-force is more largely distributed 
to the animal faculties. The proportions of the skull in the 
Mound Builder indicate that his intelligence was not over- 
borne by strong and fierce passions. In this respect the hints 
of the Mounds are fully sustained. 

A mild and rather feeble character rendered him an easy 
prey to the influence of authority. The Indian had a strong 
personal will and a strength of passions that would not tolerate 
arbitrary control ; while the race of the Mound submitted to 
it without resistence. This permitted a strong organization 
and the massing of activities and labor under the control of 
one will, which was indispensable to the commencement of 
civilization. The skull corroborates the testimony of the 
Mounds that they were not warlike. They were like the 
Peruvians, indisposed to contest but submissive to command, 
and when they did fight probably preferred to do so behind 
entrenchments. 

A vigorous, progressive civilization requires vehement pas- 
sions controlled by a strong intelligence. The primitive and 
partial culture we see here is the natural product of a quiet, 
inofiensive race, limited equally in their passions and intelli- 
gence, but easily held to the discipline that would result 
finally inconsiderable skill. This submissiveness and patient 
persistence, so contrary to the nature of the Indian, was fully 
competent to produce all the monuments and works of art 
whose remnants we find in the mounds. 

For the most part they must have been of ordinary or medium 
size. It is not a point easy to verify, for they very often reduced 
the body to ashes, or nearly so, by fire during the funeral cere- 
mony, and where this was not the case the bones were so much 
decayed as to crumble into dust when exposed to the air. There 
have, however, been few indications of variation from the usual 
standard of size sufficient to attract attention. In the demoli- 
tion of a large mound at St. Louis bones were found indicating 



PHYSICAL QUALITIES OF MOUND BUILDERS. 135 

tliat the persons in life had been rather above tlie ordinary 
stature. In Illinois, below that city, many years ago a series 
of graves under low mounds were found, in wliich the skele- 
tons were small, and it was supposed that a race of pigmies 
liad been found. As in many other cases, at diiferent points 
in the Valley, these bodies were protected by Hat stones which 
were so placed as to form a coffin or sarcophagus. As no 
similar cases of diminutive skeletons have been discovered, 
except wdiere they were evidently relics of children, it is in- 
ferred that these were not adults. The crania which have been 
preserved indicate ordinary size. Their choice of the most 
fertile localities in the Valley and their ability to devote so 
much labor to purposes apart from the struggle for the means 
of subsistence indicate that they dwelt in the midst of plenty 
and were possessed of abundant physical vigor. 

The Peruvian mummies, preserved in large numljers, show 
that people to have been of small stature; but tliey lived 
mostly in the raritied air of a mountain plateau. There is 
mucli to indicate that the Mound Builders were strung and 
healthy, that there were many leisured classes, and that par- 
ties from the Ohio and the Lower Mississippi visited the mines 
of Lake Superior, the shores of the Gulf, the mountains of 
North Carolina and of New Mexico. The general tone of 
revelation by the Mounds shows us a quiet, industrious people, 
developing, for the most part, in undisturbed peace and plenty, 
whose strongest passions were connected with the religious 
sentiment. They liad much taste in the minor arts and a 
good deal of personal vanity as indicated Ijy the profusion of 
well-wrought ornaments found in many of the sepulchral 
mounds. 

The evidences of a settled government are very positive, 
although based only on inference. The untutored instincts of 
the primitive man are those of the animal. He knows no 
higher law than his own necessities and owns no control but 
that of his own willful caprice. Only outward pressure, wliich 



136 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

he finds no adequate means of resisting, can overcome his love 
of leisure, when a supply of food has rendered him comfortable 
in body. To renounce control of himself and to accept the 
will of another as the law of his life requires much time and 
a steady pressure until submission becomes a well-settled 
habit. This habit is that of being governed, and it is only 
when a government has grown to the full proportions of an 
institution and all the resources of the people are unhesitat- 
ingly placed in its hand that it can lay broad j)lans and carry 
them out in detail. In this view the very existence of the 
mounds is proof of a strong government. 

When we find fortifications, deliberately and wisely planned, 
requiring the painful toil of many thousands of men for 
months or years, we can not well escape the conclusion that 
they were in the habit of obeying an authority which exerted 
a sovereign control over the lives and property of the people. 
This is still more strongly the case when we see a sacred 
inclosure drawn around an intricate but harmonious series of 
immense works covering more than four square miles of 
surface with, square, circular, elliptical and octagonal inclos- 
ures, great mounds and long-drawn avenues included within 
what must, originally, have been lofty walls. 

The evidence is tolerably clear that all the mounds in the 
Yalley were built by a homogeneous people. The same 
ideas were plainly involved in them all. They vary in dif- 
ferent parts, more or less, yet they intermingle and melt 
one into the other; no distinct line separates them. If the 
inclosure is chiefly characteristic of the region north of the 
Ohio, and the platform mound, or truncated pyramid, more pre- 
vails at the south, the inclosure is sometimes found from Mis- 
sissippi to Georgia, and the elevated platform still more often 
appears in the Northern Yalley. Only a friendly spirit, union 
of interests and intimate intercourse would lead them to avoid 
interiors and select the most accessible river valleys for their 
chief settlements. They certainly had nothing to fear from 



EVIDENCES OF A GENERAL GOVKKN'MKNT. 137 

each otlier which coukl not liavo been the case had various 
governments controlled on the Scioto, the Wabash, the Upper 
and Lower Mississippi. Independent governments are neces- 
sary rivals in the early stages of civilization. The absolute 
rulers over nations of submissive slaves can not tolerate ambi- 
tion in each other. 

It seems probal)le that a peaceful union existed on a 
religious base, as in ancient Egypt, and that the kingly and 
priestly offices concentrated supi-eme control in one person, as 
in Peru. The fable of a descent from the Sun has secured a 
long and quiet lease of power to the royal families of various 
primitive nations on each continent. The indications seem 
to point to some similar liction among the race of the 
Mounds, and this joined the Valley in a liarmony and 
quiet unbroken till danger from the northeast, in the later 
days of their history, rose in formidable proportions, leadiiig 
to the construction of the numerous fortifications from the 
Alleghany River to the Wabash. Their size and elaborate 
structure intimate powerful enemies and the danger of fre- 
quent attacks, while various hints of a sudden catastrophe 
suggest an overthrow so complete that no prolonged stand 
was made in the lower Valley. 

It would be very natural that the seat of government should 
be near the meeting of the two great streams, on which were 
the principal masses of the people, and that the finest art 
relics should be found in that neighborhood. This last has 
actually been the case, in some lines. The signs of a dense 
population are numerous while the absense of fortifications 
intimates that no danger was apprehended, the line of the 
Wal)ash containing the nearest defensive W(jrks. 

One of the pyramids of Egypt, if the ancient history is 
to be relied on, was built by the labor of three hundred and 
sixty thousand men, continued for twenty years. The great 
mound of Cahokia was one third the size of the great 
pyramid of Egypt, and several mounds in the Valley equal 



138 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

in cubic contents many of the pyramids of smaller size. 
Common consent, without other pressure, or despotic tribal 
governments that should have produced these great monu- 
ments, so numerous, so wide-spread, and bearing throughout 
the stamp of common ideas, woukl be impossible anomalies 
in history. The monuments of Peru and Mexico were due to 
general governments which controlled the details of private 
life and held the mass of the citizens as virtual slaves. It 
was undoubtedly the same in the Valley. 

The numbers of this race must have been very large — some 
millions, at least. The size of the inclosures nortli of the 
Ohio testifies emphatically to the presence of multitudes. A 
sacred inclosure extending over four square miles was but one 
of scores in the Valley of a small tributary of the Oliio. 
There seems ffood reason to infer that at least a million 
people inhabited this part of Ohio and its immediate vicinity. 
Many thousand must have been gathered about every large 
platform mound. These evidences of a large population 
extend from the branches of the Alleghany River to the Gulf 
— a distance of 2,400 miles — running back on the tributary 
streams sometimes hundreds of miles with numerous centers 
evidently crowded with people. It was no thinly scattered 
population that left so many enduring traces of their presence 
along the thousands of miles of river valley. 

It has been suggested that they commenced their labors on 
the Ohio and its branches, and, being driven thence by fierce 
northern tribes, retreated down the Valley. Many facts, how- 
ever, are not in keeping with this supposition. Nothing is 
more striking in regard to the relics of the Ohio mounds than 
their southern origin. Much the larger portion, in numbers, 
were from southern waters. Tlie pearls, the beads, made from 
shells found only on the shores of the Gulf, the mica, exten- 
sively mined in the mountains of the southeast, and the ob- 
sidian, from those of the southwest, indicate a lively trade 
with those regions. Besides, how could the rich valleys of the 



TIIK WHOLE VALLEY OC(^UPlED AT ONCE. 139 

lower streams with their milder climate have failed to attract 
settlement when they could be reached from the north simply 
by committing themselves in primitive canoes to the current 
of the great streams? 

Tlic expulsion of the Mound Builders from the north, where 
they developed so much talent for military defence, should be 
indicated by a repetition of those defences if they made a per- 
manent stand below; but of this there is no trace. They 
were evidently long threatened from the northeast, while the 
inhabitants of the central and lower Valley dwelt in security; 
but the danirer sudderdy burst out in uncontrollable fury. 
The miners left their work incomplete on Lake Superior; the 
fortresses were stormed and only a small part of the popula- 
tion about them probably escaped the general massacre. The 
remnant rushed down the Valley pursued by the triumphant 
foe, and the Mound Builders Empire suddenly collapsed. This 
history has often been repeated among the primitive nations. 
Just so the Empire of Montezunni fell, and the wise rule of 
the powerful Incas of Peru ended in sudden ruin. 

A general unity and coincident occupation of the whole 
Valley is most probable, and this implies a very large popula- 
tion. This large population of unwarlike people would be no 
argument against sudden annihilation. Alexander conquered 
the countless hosts of the Persian Empire with thirty thousand 
men, and the Aztecs and Peruvians were overthrown by a few 
hundred European warriors. The savages by whom this Val- 
ley Empire must have been conquered probably pursued the 
same policy as the Iroquois of later times. Three distant 
branches of their own race, which were settled in Upper 
Canada between the Lakes, and on the southern shore of Erie, 
were suddenly attacked about the middle of the seventeenth 
century and annihilated. The dawning missions among the 
Hurons, from which the Jesuits hoped so much, were suddenly 
destroyed. Their presence and counsels and French protection 
could save but a miserable remnant of a once powerful tribe. 



140 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

If the numerous and elaborate works of the Valley prove a 
large population they also furnish the strongest evidence that 
the crowded population could depend on abundant supplies of 
food. No hunter race could exist in such numbers or be 
brought under a control so complete as to give origin to tlie 
Mounds. The Indian tribes followed the game in its migra- 
tions, had only temporary residences, and could not spare time 
■if they had possessed the inclination for such labors. The 
Mound Builders had a keen eye to agricultural productiveness, 
and all the sites of their works were located in the most fertile 
alluvial basins. The occurrence of mounds of observation and 
signal stations on prominent points, which were concealed and 
useless by the heavy forests on and around them, hints that 
the forest had been removed before the time of their erection. 
The heavy timber had been cut down and in its place, without 
doul)t, were vast fields of corn and, perhaps, other grains. 

The occurrence of charred corn on the altars of sacrifice 
seems to turn this supposition into certainty. The occurrence 
of ancient fields, sometimes called " garden-beds," in which 
regular rows, as of maize carefully cultivated, with a manifest 
divisi(jn into distinct lots by a change in the direction of the 
rows, seems to favor this idea. The Indians were never known 
to cultivate with such carefulness and regularity. Only a 
cheap food could render possible the extra labors and public 
monuments of this race. Maize, or Indian corn, is a native of 
tropical regions, where it grows wild. It was probably intro- 
duced to North America by this race in their migration from 
the South, together with tobacco, which is a native of the 
Andes. The great number of pipes found in the mounds in- 
dicates that tobacco was a favorite luxury with the Mound 
Builders and widely cultivated. They are believed also to have 
cultivated beans and various vines. 

There are indications in places that they sometimes sur- 
rounded their cultivated fields with embankments of earth, 
and that on some of the streams they built levees to prevent 



EVIDENCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND FORESIGHT. 141 

ovei-flow. Trac^es of roads and causeways liave also been 
noticed on the affluents of tlie Lower Mississippi. Maize 
is so productive in the regions occupied bjtheMouncj Buiklers 
that comparatively few persons could easily cultivate enough 
to furnish the principal food to thousands. It was the basis 
of their civilization, there is no doubt. The ancient dwellers 
in the fertile valleys exulted in ])]enty drawn from a careful 
and systematic cultivation that furnished all the food they 
could require. 

On this unfailing abundance, drawn from the best watered 
and most fertile parts of the Valley, rose a variety of classes 
and a division of labor, without which advance in civilization 
would be impossible. The evidence is clear that the elements 
of engineering and of skill in laying out military works was 
considerably advanced. Accurate squares, angles, circles, and 
other figures on a scale often embracing many acres are fre- 
quent, and works distant from each other inclose precisely 
the same space. The corners of the platform mounds usually 
correspond with the points of the compass. A careful, meas- 
ured regularity is a marked feature of a large part of the 
works, especially where they are carried out on a large scale. 
The genius of foresight and calculation, of preparation against 
a variety of disasters, indicates a class educated to the military 
life among a people to whom fighting was not agreeable. The 
extremely large scale of many of the fortresses indicates that 
there must have been many soldiers to defend them, and per- 
haps that they were places of temporary resort during an in- 
road of the enemy. Occasionally a town site appears to liave 
been protected with walls; but usually the fortresses occupied 
the heights which offered the best luitural facilities for defence. 
If Wooden stockades crowned the earthworks, as is probable, 
they must have been very formidable to a savage foe. They 
probably sheltered the people for many generations against 
occasional attacks. 

The arts of the Mound Builders did not extend to working 



142 THE Mississirri valley. 

stone in masses. For this the surface of the Yallej did not 
furnish very abundant material, but their minor sculptures 
often indicate an observant eye, and, considering the materials 
and the tools, an extremely skillful hand. The Peruvians had 
learned the art of hardening- copper with tin so that stone 
could be worked with metal tools. There is no indication of 
any such useful tools among this race; and yet the hardest 
stone was wrought into a great variety of forms. These works 
of art, in a great multitude of cases, are surprisingly true to 
nature. Most of the animals of the Valley and some never 
found in it were executed with rare fidelity and correctness of 
expression, in characteristic attitudes, and, when the material 
permitted, a high polish was added. Some of their works 
rival the best Peruvian specimens. 

So striking are many of these works of sculptured art that 
some have refused to believe a people so primitive as they 
supposed the Mound Builders were, could have produced 
them. Seven d liferent specimens of the manatee or laman- 
tin, a curious marine animal, with two fore paws closely re- 
sembling a human hand, have been found. It frequents the 
shores and rivers of the northern coast of South America. 
Many other sculptures represent animals of the southern hem- 
isphere, and their occurrence in the mounds of the upper 
Yalley is considered extremely significant. Some have be- 
lieved them imyjorted, but equally skillful representations of 
birds and most of the animals of the Yalley as clearly show 
that there were artists here quite capable of producing them 
after having once closely observed the originals. 

Some unfinished sculptures suggest how the work was car- 
ried on, although the kind of tool used for cutting is a mys- 
tery. The outline was made as a whole, and the details for 
each part worked out together and in harmony — showing that 
a full picture was in the mind of the artist from the first — and 
the strokes of the cutting tool were bold and confident, dis- 
playing a well-skilled hand. Occasionally a humorous figure, 



THE CULTUKE I'ROVEN BY TIIEIK ART REMAINS. 143 

or a caricature, reveals tlie sense of fun in the maker and his 
success in reproducing his conceit. Mucli of this sculpture 
remains only as the ornamentation of pipes, although hunnxn 
fio-ures have frequently been found, sometimes enshrined in 
shells, the central parts of which had been cut away. These 
have been supposed to be small idols, with how much reason 
is uncertain. 

Much expression is often conveyed by the human faces and 
in the attitude of the form. '' Notliing can surpass the truth- 
fulness and delicacy of the sculpture," says one very experi- 
enced and intelligent observer; and it is declared that the 
ornamentation of urns, water-jars and various specimens of 
pottery is much superior to anything found in Europe in the 
" Bronze Age." Only in the " Iron Age " next preceding the 
historical era in Europe, is the same skill noted. 

All this is fully in keeping with the intelligence and capac- 
ity manifested under other forms by the Mound Builders. All 
was characteristic of a peculiar, unborrowed and really im- 
portant, advance beyond a barbarous condition, and indicative 
of a higher degree of culture than those are willing to ac- 
knowledge whose minds are filled with images of the colossal 
sculptures of Egypt and Assyria. They had laid a solid 
foundation for future progress by careful original studies, 
long and patient practice and a wide range of observation and 
experience. Their measure of advance was the more signifi- 
cant that they had the most serious possible difiiculties to 
overcome by reason of their want of suitable implements with 
which to embody their conceptions. 

We may justly assume that what has remained to our 
times of these very ancient products of industry and art 
represents but a small part of them when they stood in their 
full completeness. How little has remained to show the 
industry, the art, and the splendor of ancient Babylon and 
Nineveh, of Memphis and Tyre ! A large part of our 
knowledge of them is derived from eye witnesses, or from 



144 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

those who lived in or near the same period. They had a 
knowledge of iron and how to work it so as to make it 
serve their industries. The horse, the ox, the camel and the 
elephant aided their labors; and the dry climate of countries 
surrounded by arid deserts tended to preserve monuments 
which they built largely of stone. 

The climate of the Yalley, on the contrary, is moist; the 
material of which its ancient people built their monuments 
was chiefly the soft soil, easily spread far and wide during 
the long course of two or three thousand years of storm 
and wind and frost. They had no beasts of burden ; they 
knew nothing of iron ; they had not even learned how to 
harden copper, as did the Peruvians later, and their more 
effective implements must be made of stone. They had 
numerous copper tools, but they were too soft for heavy 
work. Their axes and hoes and picks must be painfully 
shaped out of the more tenacious rocks ; their knives and 
graving implements they made, like the Mexicans, from flint 
and obsidian. 

With stone axes, assisted by fire, they removed the heavy 
timber growth ; with stone hoes and other awkward imple- 
ments they stirred the soil, cultivated maize, their staple 
food, which they varied with fish from the streams, near 
which all their works are found, and with game from the 
neighboring forests, slain by their flint-tipped arrows and 
spears. With how much toil and difiiculty all this was 
accomplished it is difticult for us to conceive. It took more 
than half a century for the civilized pioneers, provided with 
the steel-edged axe, the serviceable plow, the light hoe, the 
sickle and the scythe, assisted by the horse and ox, to repeat 
their work. 

They had houses to build with equally inefficient tools, they 
wove cloth from the fibres of plants for garments, they 
boiled salt at the " Kentucky Licks," they obtained copper from 
Lake Superior, obsidian from New Mexico, and heaped up,with 



RELIGIOUS PUKPOSE OF PLATFORM MOUNDS. 145 

laborious steadiness, innltitndes of mounds and miles upon 
miles of embankments. But the rich soil responded readily 
to the touch of their cumbrous implements of agriculture 
and the labor of one supplied food for many. There was 
plenty for the rulers and their servants, their numerous priest- 
hood, the thousands of soldiers who garrisoned the strongholds, 
and the multitudes who labored for the State. 

A careful examination of the mounds shows that a large 
part of them were evidently connected with the religious 
institutions of the builders. The altars of sacrilice, found so 
numerously in the upper Valley, were replaced in the south 
by the truncated pyramid, or platform mound. These are 
peculiar to America and appear to have had their origin in 
the Mississippi Valley, since they are found in fuller develop- 
ment in Mexico and Central America. The pyramid, or plat- 
form mound, of Cholula, not far from the City of Mexico, is 
twice as large as the great pyramid of Egypt and supported 
a temple on its summit. It was on the top of such a mound 
in Mexico itself that the captive Spaniards were sacrificed 
under the eye of the helpless Cortez. 

Stephens, who made an extensive and careful survey of the 
mysterious stone cities of Central America, remarks : " In 
Egypt no pyramid was crowned by a temple ; there is no 
pyramidal structure in this country without it." The frequent 
presence of altars on these mounds in the South, their habit- 
ual position where multitudes could be gathered at their base, 
the graded ways leading up to their summits, and various 
other circumstances, point them out as devoted to the same 
service, although no stone edifices were erected on them, as in 
the countries further south. 

They are one of the strongest links that connect the Mound 
Builders with the architects in stone in those regions where 
an obviously later and more elaborate civilization was devel- 
oped. As the Assyrians had learned, in the soft plains of 
Chaldea, to construct earth mounds as a base for public build- 



146 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ings and transferred the custom to the rocky regions to which 
they removed, so, apparently, the habit of raising earth 
mounds in the soft and level spaces of the Valley was carried 
among the mountain plateaus by the Toltecs in their flight, 
and the skill they had acquired in the small arts of sculpture 
expanded into the adornment of the massive stone buildings 
with which they there crowned them. 

The most striking feature of character, which the mounds 
prove was a leading trait of their authors, was their religious 
habit. It has been conjectured that they were ruled by the 
religious orders, or that the sacerdotal character was the base 
of kingly power. The Incas were the " Children of the Sun," 
and Montezuma was the high priest of his nation. Their 
religious institutions were probably more perfectly developed 
than any others. It is inferred from the distinct character of 
the ofterings on the numerous altars of a sacred inclosure on 
the Scioto that they worshipped various powers, presenting to 
each a separate class of burnt ofterings. Like most primitive 
nations they deified the forces of nature, and, chief among 
these, the Sun. 

To catch the first rays of the god of day they elevated the 
mounds high above their habitations and perhaps, in the 
Mississippi Valley, contented themselves with a worship of 
the great luminary under the open sky. It was the beneficent 
source of life, fruitfulness and heat, and eternal fires w^ere 
maintained in its honor. From this arose, in all probability, 
the sacrifices by fire that smoked on every altar in the Valley 
and consumed all that they held most precious. The Persians, 
the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Peruvians and Aztecs 
all worsliipped the Sun as a principal divinity. The semi- 
civilized nations of the New World extinguished their fires at 
certain astronomical periods, rekindled them at the commence- 
ment of the new cycle, and the sacrifices then made usually 
included human beings. The Aztecs are said to have re- 



WORSHIP OF THE SUN AND HUMxVN SAC'lilFICES. 147 

kindled tlie fire on the breast of a living man wliose heart 
was afterward torn ont. 

It is supposed that some of the mounds on the highest 
points inthe upper Valley were places where the sacred fire 
was periodically renewed. They were, in such places, of stone, 
which give evidence of intense or long-continued heat, caused, 
probably, by the fires which were never allowed to expire but 
at the time appointed for renewal. The wonderful powers of 
natui-e, whose mysteries now engage the inexhaustible interest 
and intelligent researches of modern science, were extremely 
impressive to tlie early nations and none, perhaps, have failed 
to worship tliem under some form. The daily miracle of the 
sun's progress across the heavens and the various effects pro- 
duced by it in the different seasons were especially noted with 
superstitious wonder and veneration, which led to institutions 
for its worship and the setting apart of a priesthood con- 
secrated to its service, to the maintenance of sacred fires and 
to the presentation of offerings designed to lionor or pro- 
pitiate it. 

Most of the races, whose passage from barbarism to semi- 
civilization lias been noted, have been found to include human 
sacrifice among these precious offerings to the sun and other 
heavenly and earthly powers whose anger was feared or whose 
aid was sought. Few of the altar mounds fail to show evi- 
dences of the burning of human bodies on them, which gives 
rise to the opinion, among those who have studied them, that 
this horrible custom was prevalent among the Mound Builders. 
The bodies of the dead were burned as a part of the burial 
rites in all sections of the Yalley to a large extent; yet that 
was only one of the forms employed, and the ceremony was 
evidently different in the burial mounds from that practiced 
on the altars. There can scarcely be a doubt that this ghastly 
form of worship was a part of the altar service, and that thou- 
sands of human lives have been ended here by violence at the 
hands of the ministers of religion. Perliaps their best and 



148 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

dearest were often so presented by this very religiously in- 
clined race — '' the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul " — 
as in ancient Palestine. The practices of the Mexicans on 
structures similar to the temple mounds shed a fearful light 
of suggestion on their uses. 

That they failed to have a priesthood devoted to the care 
and service of the altars and temples is most improbable. 
With so large a number of different religious structures this 
class must have been well organized into a hierarchy, or 
succession of orders and grades. Twenty-four altars in one 
inclosure on the Scioto were consecrated apparently to different 
objects of adoration. One contained a crescent formed of 
round pieces of mica, which suggests offerings to the moon; 
another god was apparently appealed to by offerings of tobacco 
and pipes, more than two hundred in a charred condition 
being counted on one altar; flint arrow-heads, in great num- 
bers, were the chief relics of another, as if a treaty closing a 
war had been solemnized, or the favor of the '• god of battles" 
sought; other altars showed various offerings differing largely 
on each. 

This organization of the religious sentiment has always been 
accomplished by, or accompanied with, an extensive develop- 
ment of a priesthood, and there seems no reason whatever to 
doubt that it occurred here, also. AH experience shows the 
civil and religious powers united, in some form in primitive 
civilizations, and in many cases the king or prince became 
religious as well as civil head. This was the case in both 
Peruvian and Aztec organizations, and may be inferred in the 
kindred race of the Mounds. A quiet and gentle race, such 
as these evidently were, has always been easily ruled through 
its religious susceptibilities. The great mounds and the 
larger sacred inclosures were probably the residences of re- 
ligious dignitaries of the highest rank. 

The many similarities of the Mound Builders and their 
evident institutions to the people of tropical America, who 



THEIR CONNECTION WITH SOUTH AMERICA. 149 

had advanced far toward true civilization in some ways when 
overwhelmed by the Spaniards, have been frequently noticed. 
The indications are fairly conclusive of extremely intimate 
relations between them. There are reasons for supposing such 
relations both before and after the building of the mounds. 
Wherever early civilizations can be traced back to their ap- 
parent origin they have led the inquirer to a tropical region 
— usually a healthy plateau or elevated valley. 

This does not tail in the case of the Mound Builders. There 
is reason to suppose that the original rise above a barbarous 
condition commenced on the plateau at the eastern base of the 
Andes in the north of South America, whence the population 
wandered northeast through the isthmus, and south among 
the hifj-her elevations of the mountains. The same general 
formation of the skull, the same general traits of character, 
seem to imply this. There is a wide distinction between the 
semi-civilized races and savage tribes that seems to prove a 
very early separation of the stock, or else a different original 
birth-place for each. The Indian tribes seem to have come 
from the northwest; the Mound Builders from the south- 
west. 

Maize and tobacco are natives of South America, and were 
probably introduced by the Mound Builder race to ^N^orth 
America, Along with these they brought a knowledge of 
tropical birds and animals, of obsidian, pearls, and copper, 
and this knowledge was probably maintained by subsequent 
intercourse in some way. The fact of some kind of inter- 
course is unquestionably established by the works of art to 
which similarities of character and physical structure give 
great significance. 

The traditions of the Toltecansof Mexico indicate that they 
were once settled in a country to the northeast; that they 
were violently attacked by fierce savage tribes, and, after a 
war of thirteen years, completely overcome. Under several 
leaders they abandoned their country and made several settle- 



150 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ments at different points in Mexico, but finally transferred 
the seat of their government to the Valley of Mexico. A 
variety of legends have been preserved by the early Spaniards 
relating apparently to the later stages of this migration. The 
oldest date in the language of this race is said, by the Abbe 
Brasseur de Bourbourg — who devoted himself with great zeal 
to the collection of all the information that could be drawn 
from original sources before they were quite scattered and 
lost — to have been 955 B. C. As this dates their advent to 
power in Mexico their wanderings must have begun about a 
tliousand years before the Christian era. This was two cen- 
turies and a quarter before the first Olympiad — the starting- 
point of dates in Grecian history — and about twT) and a half 
centuries before the foundation of Rome. 

How far this is to be relied on it is difficult to say. The 
Abbe Brasseur had learned the Nahuatal, or Toltecan language, 
and none of his successors among Mexican historians were 
competent to criticise his statements. AVe have already seen 
that a number of indications in the mounds point to the prob- 
ability of about that age for their abandonment. Torquemada 
found in Mexico an old record describing these wanderers on 
their appearance in that country, " as a fine-looking, intelli- 
gent race, of industrious and orderly habits, and skilled in 
working metals and stones." There is much difference of 
opinion as to the trustworthiness of these records, but a gen- 
eral consent in the statement that they ruled Mexico for many 
centuries, during which they made notable progress in art and 
science, when their government fell into disorder and finally 
gave place to that of the fierce and bloody Aztecs who adopted 
much of their civilization but stood far beneath them in hu- 
manity and real culture. 

During this long period from their first appearaiice in Mex- 
ico to their final subjection by the Aztecs, there was appar- 
ently, at all times, a confused state of migrations back and 
forth over the region between the Valley of Mexico and Cen- 



THE MIGRATION OF THE TOLTECS. 



151 



tral America, and it is believed by some that this race built 
the best of the mound temples with their singular sculptures 
in the forests and mountains covering the northern part of 
Central America, and that the Toltecs, the most truly civilized 
of all North American races, were the true Mound Builders. 
According to this view the primitive civilization of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley was the original type— the base on which the 
Southern arts and culture of North America was founded. 
The evidence of a great advance from savage life has been 
noted, and facts, as well as such traces of history as can be 
o-athered, unite in pointing to one conclusion. It is not, 
indeed, accepted as the only possible one; but the most care- 
ful research has discovered the largest number of indications 
of such a connection of events. 

Such migrations liave been very numerous in the history of 
the Old World, and the fresh impulse given by adventure, 
together with the mixture of races that has usually followed, 
have been among the strongest stimulants to more rapid and 
enlarged progress. The word Toltec is said to be still synon- 
ymous with architect in Mexican; the very numerous mounds 
point to the building tendency of an early people who had 
few tools or models; while Central American architecture 
indicates models not native U) a rocky region and a very long 
previous training in scul])ture, culminating there in the ori- 
gin of hieroglyphic writing, and a really original and im- 
pressive style of architecture. T(j find such a state of progress 
"in these directions in a confined region without a wider range 
of experience and a more various discipline than could have 
been received there would be indeed surprising. Tlie litera- 
ture of Western Asia and Europe was born of many removals 
and recastings of the primitive civilization. It does not appear 
to have been original in Egypt from which it was doubly 
transplanted— to Phrenicia and thence to Greece— before the 
perfect flower and fruit could be matured. 

In the Valley of the Mississippi we find traces of singu- 



152 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

larly mature conceptions for so much backwardness in other 
respects. The elements of mathematical science are visible in 
the perfect circles, squares, octagons, ellipses and four-cornered 
mounds adjusted to the points of the compass; in the art of 
military defense, and in the surprising accuracy and truth to 
nature of the works of the sculptor and ceramic artist. They 
were on the high road to true culture and the religious tone 
of the great mass of their monuments stamps them as a 
thoughtful people. They suddenly disappeared from the 
Yalley leaving little other trace behind save their maize, their 
tobacco and a very faint and uncertain tradition, if indeed it 
refers to them. 

A degree of sacredness was attached by the modern Indian 
to the pipe and tobacco, which were favorite offerings on the 
mound altars, and still more closely associated with religious 
ideas in the minds of the Builders than in those of the Indians. 

The Ohio was named by the modern Iroquois, but possibly 
the Mound Builders left their name, or the name of one of 
their tribes or provinces, to the Alleghany Mountains ; 
although it appears impossible to tell whether or not that 
name is only the relic of a hunter tribe of which so many were 
annihilated by the fierce confederacy of New York. The 
elaborate defenses along the northern tributaries of the Ohio 
intimate that a struggle, lasting for generations, preceded the 
final catastrophe. This was produced by, perhaps, the strong 
Indian confederacy of the Five Nations and prolonged by the 
Mound Builders' fortifications. But suddenly the mines of 
Lake Superior were al)andoned while they were yet engaged 
in raising a huge mass of ore and never, apparently, revisited. 
Unfinished altars remained forever uncovered; the fortress, 
the sacred inclosure and the temple mound became suddenly 
solitary, and the forest proceeded to reassert its control over 
them. 

They must have been hotly pursued into the lower Yalley 
for they did not rear there fortifications such as they had been 



WHY TIIEY SUDDENLY DISAPPExVRED. 153 

driven from above, and indeed all their locations were ex- 
tremely accessible to the swift bark, or log, canoe of the Indian. 
A miserable remnant of prisoners probably dragged out a 
weary and desolate life in slavery, while the more intelligent 
and enterprising spared from slaughter abandoned the beau- 
tiful Yalley, nor felt themselves safe till they were hundreds 
of miles beyond the Rio Grande, and at length found them- 
selves near the lake of Mexico. Like the central mountain 
plateau of Asia and the woods of Germany, the higldands of 
the Rocky Mountains seem to have sent forth swarm after 
swarm of fierce, warlike, and (in this case) wholly barl)arous 
tribes, which flowed, wave after wave, eastward into the Val- 
ley and south toward Mexico. During some of these destruc- 
tive attacks of the Chichimecs, as all the barbarians were 
called by the Toltecs, a colony fled to Central America for 
refuge and carried their architectural tendencies to a still 
higher and more perfect stage of development. 

Such seem to be the reasonable conclusions from the facts 
revealed in earth and stone, and l)y the records of Mexican 
and Central American history preserved by Jesuit missionaries 
in New Spain. Apparently only a wandering tribe from the 
foot of the Andes could introduce maize and tobacco and a 
knowledge of the fauna of those tropical regions. The Valley 
was too thinly populated by the men who had been contem- 
porary with the mammoth and mastodon to have any opposi- 
tion raised to their settlement along the rivers of the middle 
and eastern Valley, and for unknown centuries they dwelt in 
security until the numbers and valor of the hunter tribes 
around Lake Ontario accumulated danger and, finally, ruin. 

They were not to be left to build up a political and social 
structure here that might waste too many of the treasures of 
the Valley on the childhood of humanity and an imperfect 
civilization. These treasures must be held fairly intact and 
the ground kept clear for the utmost development of the 
civilization matured with so much pains and care around the 



154 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Mediterranean and on the shores of Western Europe. Tlie 
quiet and busy agricultural dwellers in the Yalley, after ages 
of undisturbed growth or, in later times, of successful defense 
by their superior intelligence, were suddenly found unable to 
resist the fierce, determined onslaught of the bravest of the 
Indian tribes. In all probability a few thousand warriors 
of the forest, knowing no mercv and delio-htins: in the 
slaughter of the flying foe who had long resisted them by 
virtue of his fortifications, drove before them the millions of 
the Mound Builders as Alexander scattered the vast armies 
of Persian Darius. 

A¥hat agonies of terror, what scenes of dreadful carnage, 
may then have been witnessed by mounds and prairies and 
streams, we can scarcely hope to know. Undoubtedly in 
great mental distress and bodily suffering the escaped remnant 
abandoned their fields, their temples, and the streams whose 
banks they and their ancestors had beautified by incessant 
toil. It must have been one of the most fearful catastrophes 
of warring humanity. 

The retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, recorded by Xeno- 
phon, and the distresses of De Soto's little army after his 
death, must have been trifles compared to this exodus of the 
disheartened, terrified, and perishing remnant of a great na- 
tion. Their houses left behind decayed; their temples rotted 
and disappeared from the mounds; the forests reappeared over 
their pleasant valleys and hills and sacrificial altars. No one 
entered into their labors or reaped the reward of their pains- 
taking industry. Their very names vanished from the Yalley, 
unless it is recorded by the mountains forming its eastern 
boundary. The Yalley rested in its weighty service to man 
until the people worthy of it should appear to build a mightier 
social and political fabric and make full use of all its varied 
and abundant sources of wealth. The Indian tribes left them 
essentially untouched. 



PAKT SECOND. 



THE INDIAN TRIBES AND EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT OF THE 
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



CHAPTER r. 

THE WILD HUNTERS OF THE VALLEY. 

A very different race from the Mound Builders lield posses- 
sion of tlie Valley when adventurers from Europe became 
acquainted with it. Almost without arts which deserved the 
name, depending chietij on hunting, lishing, and the spontane- 
ous fruits of the soil, for food, they spent much of their time 
in roaming from place to place, bestowing very little care or 
labor on dwellings temporarily occupied. The art of war, 
which, after hunting, they considered almost the oidy serious 
occupation worthy of a man, was, witli them, e<]ually simple. 
It consisted in sudden attacks on the enemy, in winch success 
was largely due to surprise, and in the use of all the stratagems 
and feints which their ingenuity could devise, but never, when 
it could be avoided, in a tair and open contest. 

It was conducted by small bands, rarely nunil)ering more 
than a few hundred, who, having struck a decisive Idow, or 
failed in the attempt, withdrew as secretly and rapidly as they 
had come. They, therefore, seldom fortilied themselves, or 
they did so only when expecting the attack of an unusually 
formidable and persistent foe. They then contented them- 
selves with a hastily-constructed stockade, or rudely strength- 
ened a naturally strong position to defend themselves against 
a surprise or the first onset of the enemy. Some more war- 
like tribes, especially the Iroquois at the northeast, and some 

155 



156 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

of the Mobilians, in the south, bestowed considerable pains 
on the defenses of the towns where they left their women and 
children; but, at the best, they were rudely constructed. The 
Indian warrior detested continuous labor as a restraint, and 
felt himself degraded by it. Unless immediately associated 
with his sports or his warlike occupations, he considered it 
only fitting for women and slaves. Consequently, he acquired 
little skill in construction when a somewhat more permanent 
residence, or the necessities of defense, induced him to under- 
take it. 

The size and special structure of the brain has been found 
to determine the intellectual rank of the different races of 
men. The brain of the ancient Peruvian, of the temple 
builder of Mexico, and of the Mound Builders of the Mis- 
sissippi Valley contains an average space of seventy-five cubic 
inches; that of the Indian eighty-three, and of the civilized 
Germanic races of Europe ninety. The mental force of the 
Indian is, therefore, midway between that of the Mound 
Builders and other semi-civilized nations of America, and 
that of the most progressive and intelligent modern race. 
But the brain of the Mound Builder was more symmetrical 
and indicated, by its proportions, less of the vigorous ani- 
mal passions and propensities specially characteristic of the 
Indian. Accordingly the Mound Builder, the ancient Peru- 
vian, Central American and Mexican exhibits less force of 
will, more docility, and, in general, more of the qualities 
necessary to patient and continuous labor. Thus, the low 
forms of civilization developed in Egypt, in ancient Asia and 
in America, sprung up among races inferior to the modern 
Indian, but, having a better balance of faculties — less energy 
of the passions in comparison with the degree of intelligence 
— better adapted to steady progress. They submitted readily 
to authority, could be combined in large masses, and all their 
physical forces concentrated to carry out the purposes of their 
rulers. Long and steady practice gives skill and develops 



THE MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE INDIAN. 157 

intelligence wlienever the nature of the work involves thought. 
Hence, their progress in art, nianut'actures and industry. 

The Indian, with a stronger intellectual organ, hut with 
livelier passions and more strengtli of will, ohstinatelj resisted 
the control and restraint necessary to lay the foundations of 
civilization and maintain a steady growth of improvement. 
Suhjection to the will of another and methodical labor were 
intolerable to him. With the same strength of the animal 
projjensities and a higher development of the mental faculties, 
the Indians would, like the Goths, the Gauls, and other German 
tribes who overthrew the Roman empire, and like the Aztecs, 
who subdued the Toltecans in Mexico, have admired the arts 
and comforts of the race they conquered, and the Mound 
Builders civilization would have been the iirst stage of a more 
perfect organization of society, of government, of arts and of 
religion in the great Valley. But they w-ere like children 
before intelligence and reflection have matured. The wild, 
free life of the woods and fields, liberty to rove from place to 
place at will, were irresistibly attractive to them. A struc- 
ture of society and government that left the individual free 
from any constraint not imposed with his own consent was 
necessary to such a people. Their chiefs were clothed with 
no coercive authority. Their power rested on public opinion, 
their personal popularity and tact in peace, and their bravery 
and success in w^ar. An Indian chief without eminence in 
personal and popular qualities would have no following and 
no power. 

Even in w^ar no coercion was employed and none was pos- 
sible. O nly those who chose joined a chief in a proposed expe- 
dition, and, even after having engaged in it, obedience to him 
was still substantially voluntary. An Indian army was strong 
only in its enthusiastic love of war, in its confidence in the 
leader and its assurance of victory. A repulse or other dis- 
heartening event showed it to be a rope of sand. Without 
shame or loss of reputation the Indian braves abandoned the 



158 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

leader in the expedition when it was no longer attractive to 
them or thej no longer hoped for snecess. 

A government that may not command or punish, that has 
no power to carry out its designs when popular enthusiasm 
declines, and wdiich rests on the spontaneous support of a 
people in their mental childhood, could never originate, or 
preserve an inherited, civilization. There can be little doubt 
that it was the ancestors of the modern Indians — certainly 
a people like them — who destroyed the Mound Builder's 
empire and w^ere unable to appreciate or perpetuate its arts 
and acquisitions, or to imitate them in rising above the wild 
and savage state. They remained the same from generation 
to generation. Their habits prevented any accumulation of 
material or mental treasure, and presented no solid ground 
on which the spirit of progress could rest its fulcrum and 
raise the descendants above the ancestors. The wisdom of the 
old men might, in part, descend to the next generation, but the 
obstinate attachment to their desultory habits did not permit 
the son to become, practically or usefully at least, superior to 
the father. Such as they were when they obliged the old 
Toltecs to abandon to them the fair Valley they continued to 
be when De Soto marched through the Gulf States to the 
Mississippi in 1539 and 1540, and when La Salle explored the 
Yalley from the Lakes to the Gulf in 1682. 

A certain rigidity of character and customs was a natural 
result of this perpetual mental childhood which gave entrance 
to no new ideas and repeated their wanderings and wars from 
age to age. This characteristic added greatly to the difhculty 
of a material change for the better, and, when they were brought 
in contact with the enlightened European nations, pi-esented 
an obstacle to their civdlization that has seldom been effectu- 
ally overcome. They seem incapable of abandoning their 
ancient liabits in the presence of a new situation, and they 
retreat before civilization instead of embracing it. This in- 
flexibility is perhaps constitutional in the race ; but probably 



THE INDIAN SUBSTITUTKS FOR LAW. 159 

tlie constitutional bias flows tVoin tlie mental structure noticed 
above — a want of symmetry and balance between tlie mental 
and physical attributes of the man. That it is not impossible 
to be at least ])artially overcome has been demonstrated among 
the tribes removed to the Indian Ten-itorv west of the Missis- 
sippi who luive adopted the habits and enjoy the comforts of 
a tolerably liigh civilization. The same result is seen among 
individual Indians in other parts of the country, and to a 
considerable extent in Canada, especially among the descend- 
ants of the Iroquois. 

The almost invincible attachment to their ancient customs 
corrected, in a singular degree, the dangers to civil and social 
order to which so great an aversion to restraint would expose 
any other community. The customs of their forefathers held 
the place of law to them, and no people, perhaps, were ever 
so little governed and so free from internal disorder. Respect 
for eminent ability, whether in speech or in act, among the 
multitude, was responded to by the chiefs in an equal respect 
for the personal liberty of all. Silver-tongued persuasion, 
glowing oratory, and emulous deeds were the immediate 
instruments of ofovernment. These were extremely effective, 
as may be seen in the history of King Phili]), of New Eng- 
land, Pontiac, of Michigan, and Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, 
who labored to construct confederacies among the scattered 
Indian tribes for the purpose of repelling the European 
invaders of their hunting grounds. They would, apparently, 
have succeeded but for the want of skill, war material, and 
discipline among their allies. These were capital defects, 
inherent in the Indian constitution and mode of life ; but, in 
spite of them, the influence of these chiefs exposed the set- 
tlers to great danger of annihilation. Oidy superior arms, 
concert and skill saved the infant settlements from swift 
ruin. 

In spite of the loose character of their government and 
the difficulty of maintaining concert of action and sustained 



160 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

concentration of energy, confederacies of many tribes were 
sometimes effected which produced important results. Tlie 
best known, and perhaps the most effective of all, was that 
of the Iroquois, or the Five Nations, of Central and Western 
New York, who, for unknown generations, had ravaged and 
more or less comj)letely conquered nearly a third part of the 
Great Yallej, 

Their union was constructed with much art, recognizing 
and turning to good account the special features of the 
Indian character, raising the Indian passion for war to 
sustained enthusiasm and evoking indomitable fierceness. 
They were as wise and politic in counsel as they were bril- 
liant and vigorous in action, as may be seen in the history 
of their long contest with the French, and their success in 
balancing the French and English aa^ainst each other for 
more than a hundred years, Avhile maintaining their own 
independence and drawing much profit from their relations 
to each of the rivals. They were a significant example of what 
the Indian is sometimes capable, notwithstanding the unfavor- 
able features of his character. Their victorious war parties 
roamed the forests from the borders of Hudson's Bay to the 
Carolinas, and held in terror all the other tribes from the 
Atlantic coast to the Mississippi. Had this confederacy been 
capable of a true union, of higli military discipline, and a 
progressive skill in organization sufficient to have pre- 
served, consolidated and firmly ruled their conquests, they 
might have repeated in America the history of the Romans 
in Europe, and have built up a vast and vigorous empire that 
would, perhaps, have deferred European occupation of North 
America for centuries. 

But the Five Nations shared the defects of the other Indian 
tribes, and we must admire the wisdom and skill that devel- 
oped so much strength out of materials which no art could 
really consolidate. Each tribe or nation of this confederacy 
was essentially independent and often made war and concluded 



THE INDIAN CONFEDERACY OF NEW YORK. IGl 

peace without reference to the rest. Tlieir ^n-aud enterprises 
were phinned in a common council whose authority rested 
on the general c(jnsent and whose determinations any tribe 
or individual might freely decline to support. The Iroquois 
was still an Indian and maintained his freedom of separate 
action with invincible obstinacy. Union of effort depended 
on a singular community of habit, inclination and passion, 
and perhaps, also, in this case, in a hereditary talent for 
diplomacy. 

Powerful and permanent confederacies were rare in Indian 
historv, because these common sentiments were so readily 
turned a'niinst each other among the distinct tribes. The 
violence or caprice of an individual, or a small band, might 
involve the whole tribe in a bloody feud with any of its 
neighbors ; and to maintain harmony between any consider- 
able number of tribes for any great length of time was a 
matter of extreme difficulty. That it was sometimes done 
demonstrates the great ascendancy which eminent diplomatic 
abilities might obtain over public opinion and how powerful 
an instrument of government a traditional policy could be- 
come among these sticklers for personal freedom. 

There is a tradition among the Iroquois that, in ancient 
times, a strong confederacy, under eminent leaders, com- 
menced a warfare w^itli a numerous and powerful people in 
the West, whose mighty chief dwelt in a house of gold ; that 
they were often repulsed, and that the contest continued a 
hundred years, when the confederacy triumphed and the con- 
(piered people fled dovni the Valley. Indian historical tra- 
ditions are not usually thought reliable ; but so great an 
event as the concpiest of the Mound Builders, whose military 
fortifications indicate a resistance so stout and long contin- 
ued, may well have made a deep impression and have been 
long dimly remembered. The Algonquin tribes, which were 
numerous and widespread both in the northern Valley and 
along the Atlantic coast, have also preserved a tradition 
11 



162 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

among the Lenni-Lenapes — who are believed to have been 
the orio'inal stock of that race — of a somewhat simiUir tjeneral 
purport. 

Thej represent their ancestors as coming from the West 
and linding a great people in the Yalley of the Mississippi, 
of whom they requested permission to pass through their 
territory. This being refused, they commenced a contest, 
lasting for thirteen yeal'S, which ended in the expulsion of 
the ancient inhabitants of the Valley. It is possible that 
both these traditions had a foundation of truth, and relate 
to the same event ; that a confederacy was formed by the 
wild tribes of the northeast to expel the peaceful Mound 
Builders from the Valley which they coveted for a hunting 
ground ; that while the combined tribes of this section 
were engaged in the contest the Algonquins, and perha])s 
other races, approached from the west and united with them 
and thus brought on the great catastrophe which expelled a 
large population and an opening civilization from their long- 
established seat. It must have been a powerful combination 
of savage foes that so completely rooted out an organized and 
numerous people from their ancient homes. It has been con- 
jectured by an eminent scholar, who made the Indian char- 
acter, language and traditions a life-long study under pecu- 
liarly favorable conditions, that the Alleghans, who left their 
name to an eastern branch of the Ohio and to the mountains 
along the eastern border of the Valley, were the Mound 
Builders ; but he assigns to them a more recent date than 
later researches have appeared to justify for the Mound 
Builders. The era of this expulsion must have been the 
heroic age of the Indian. 

Apparently, the tribes of the northeast, decimated in num- 
bers by a contest so long and wasting, retired to recruit their 
exhausted bands in their previously established homes, and 
the Algonquins, much more numerous, and, if the tradition 
may be trusted, less diminished in numbers from a shorter 



THE ORIGINAL }IOME OF THK TKIBES. 163 

connection with the conflict, occupied the Upper Valley and 
spread themselves far to the north and east above the great 
Lakes and along the Atlantic, inclosing the diminished 
Huron-Iroquois tribes — reduced by so long and so great a war 
to a remnant — on all sides. 

If these traditions contain a orerm of truth, the burden of 
the contest occurred in the northern basin of the Valley, the 
conquered remnant escaping south, but, unwilling to trust 
themselves so near a warlike and pitiless foe, there organized 
an emigration in a body to their ancient homes in the south- 
west. Apparently, the Mobilian tribes, who were afterwards 
found in the Gulf States and along the Lower Mississippi, 
wandered from the liockv Mountain reo'ion borderin£»; Xortli- 
ern Mexico after the de|)arture of the Mound Builders. This 
is indicated by some of their traditions, which descril)e a 
long series of travels from \<^est to east, in which they were 
harassed by branches of the tierce Dacotahs or Sioux for 
many yeai-s. The high })lateau north of Mexico, and the 
upper Hocky Mountain regions, seem to have been as prolific 
in har<ly and savage tribes as Northern Europe during the 
later Eoman period. Mexican traditions almost uniformly 
point to the north as the original home of her wild tribes, 
and those of the eastern and central part of the United States 
indicate as clearly a flow of immigration from the west. 

The Natchez were the only people of the lower Valley who 
shoM^ed any signs of connection with the more civilized regions 
of the southwest. It is said that in their form of govern- 
ment, their religious system and their language, they differed 
radically from all the surrounding tribes, and that, in many 
respects, they bore the appearance of being a degenerate 
offshoot of the ancient Mexicans. Their traditions are also 
stated, by some authorities, to have distinctly affirmed their 
emigration from Mexico. They were so early extinguished, 
as a tribe, that they have hot been as fully studied as the 
other races. 



164 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The structure and affinities of language are usually the 
most certain monuments of the pre-historic experiences of a 
people, and commonly furnish numerous suggestions and 
details of great value. By this means the ancient derivation, 
the wanderings, the relationships, and the gradual progress of 
a race in civilization, far back in the pre-historic ages, may 
sometimes be made out. The languages of American Indians, 
however, have quite baffled the researches of the student of 
the past, and wholly refused, as yet, to give up the secret of 
their origin. They contain few or no traces of an ancient 
civilization, or of a gradual formation by the mingling of two 
or more languages of distinct origin, as do so many of those 
of the O Id World, Apparently, they had passed through the 
hands of no more civilized g-enerations and ao-es than those of 
the people who employed them in modern times. Simplicity 
and want of culture evidently characterized the people who 
originated them, from the earliest times. No remodeling has 
produced irregularities of form, or omissions and condensa- 
tions to render the expression more brief and less cumbersome. 
Their testimony seems to prove that they sprang directly from 
the powers and needs of primitive men who ever after main- 
tained them in their original completeness and simplicity, 
adding no discordant elements and pruning off no unneces- 
sary and cumbersome exhuberance. Indian language, there- 
fore, in the judgment of the best recent authorities, unites 
with Indian manners, customs and monuments, in suggesting 
that if they were not originated on this continent they sepa- 
rated from the parent stock while in its infantile and unde- 
veloped state, and that the Wild Hunter races are not a 
degenerate oifshoot of a more civilized people. 

The Indian tribes of the Yalley, east of the Mississippi, 
were classed, by their affinities of language, as Mobilians — 
including the Creeks or Muscogees, Choctaws and Chickasaws 
— the Uchees and Natchez; the Cherokees; and the Algon- 
quins, who occupied most of the upper Valley. Branches of 



thp: locatiox of tribks tn tiik valley. 165 

Iroquois tribes occupied the head waters of the Ohio and tlie 
southern shore of Lake Erie, nearly to the western boundary 
of the State of Ohio. The Missouri and its tributaries, from 
far up in British America to Texas, was occupied by the 
Dacotahs, whose hinds extended east to, and sometimes 
beyond, the upper Mississippi. One tribe of this stock was 
settled on Lake Michigan. Texas is said to have been occupied 
along the coast by oft'shoots of the Shoshone race, whose prin- 
cipal tribes dwelt in and about the great Utah Basin. North 
and northwest Texas belonged to the Comanches. The great 
Yalley and its borders could not fail to be a pleasant residence 
for these Children of Nature. Its forests, prairies and streams 
supplied all their wants, and its mild skies saved them from 
the suffering experienced by dwellers in a more rigorous 
climate. 

These various distinct nationalities or classes of tribes of 
the Valley, so distributed, must have made their appearance 
there very long before they were visited by Europeans. The 
divergence of language among the widespread Ijranches of 
one stock required the lapse of many centuries of local sepa- 
ration. Few legends were current in regard to their original 
settlement in the Yalley, and we can not place unreserved 
confidence in those few. There were few popular and general 
traditions of their original migration from other regions. 
They had buried unnumbered generations of their fathers 
here, and the memory of their origin had retreated, at least 
for the multitudes, into the thick darkness of the distant past. 
Changes in habits and manners had been few and unimport- 
ant. The tribes of the Valley generally cultivated corn and 
some other vegetables, without, in any instance, renouncing 
their habits as hunters, or making any important advance 
toward civilization. The tendency to an almost exclusively 
jphynical life, which is indicated by the distribution of the 
brain in the whole race, appeared in the history of all the 
tribes— under the warmer sun, the briefer and milder winter 



166 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and prolific soil of the South, as well as in the more rigorous 
climate and scantier vegetation of the North. The Southern 
tribes, indeed, did not need to wander so far, and had, or 
might have had, more permanent homes, with tlieir greater 
abundance of resources in a smaller space, but, at least when 
the epoch of English settlement arrived, they were not very 
appreciably different from the rest. They were incapable, it 
appears, of improving their fairer opportunity of making a 
real progress. Such as they must have been when their fore- 
fathers conquered the Mound Builders, they were, substan- 
tially, when the Star of Civilization rose out of the Atlantic 
to introduce the dawn of a new era. 



CHAPTER II. 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION BY THE SPANIARDS. 

Columbus lifted the veil that concealed the New World 
from the Old in the last part of the fifteenth century ; but it 
was nearly three centuries later that the people for whom the 
Yalley had been reserved appeared to take permanent posses- 
sion. The Spanish discoverers were fresh from the conquest 
of the Moors, and overflowing with the spirit of romantic 
enterprise and religious zeal which that crusade had awakened. 
The great discoverer had been in his grave but a few years, his 
followers were scarcely yet firmly settled in possession of the 
beautiful and productive tropical islands lying between North 
and South America, and they w^ere still ignorant of the gold 
and silver of Mexico and Peru that w^ere soon to draw them 
like vultures to their prey, when the vicinity of Florida at- 
tracted them to examination, without, however, oflfering any 
of the substantial rewards to these high-born freebooters 
which they especially sought. 

Yet they gathered some marvelous tales from the simple 
natives and a hint of the great interior Valley which would 
prol)ably have led to speedy exploration, and possibly to set- 
tlement, had not the booty to be gained in more southern 
reo-ions soon drawn their attention away. Still, several abor- 
tive expeditions in various parts of Florida w^ere undertaken, 
and the wealth of the unfortunate Mexicans and Peruvians 
only deferred more vigorous explorations. The sixteenth 
century was distinguished in the annals of the Valley as the 
period of Spanish exploration, as the seventeenth was for 
French discovery and settlement, and tlie eighteenth for the 

167 



168 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

appearance of tlie Anglo-American who was destined to 
inherit all its beauty and wealth. 

During these three centuries Europe was passing rapidly 
through the transformations by wliich the germs of the middle 
ages ripened into modern civilization and culture. The 
Spanish, French and English displayed in the Valley the 
characteristic features of three epochs of development — 
mental, moral and economic — which marked the transition 
of Europe from a rude and confused state to the clear concep- 
tions and harmonious growth of the present century. 

The Spanish period was imbued with the spirit of the 
Crusades which had animated Europe, more or less, for four 
hundred years. The Spaniards may be called the Last of the 
Crusaders — who slew infidels for the love of God — but it was 
the crusading spirit degenerated and overmastered by love of 
grain in the soldier, whose violence was winked at bv the min- 
isters of religion, partly because they did not fully see the 
wrong of it, and partly because it was uncontrollable. The 
Spaniards had just completed the Moorish wars, which were 
partly patriotic and partly religious, and from wliich they had 
secured great gain by the expulsion of the Mohammedans 
and the ]x>ssession of their estates. It was an attractive form 
of piety to rude warriors. The ebbing waves of the Moorish 
war swept away the elegant civilization which the followers 
of the Prophet had maintained in the Spanish peninsula for 
eight hundred years, and left the Christian cavaliers in pos- 
session of their cities and lands, and full of enthusiastic 
eagerness to enter on new conquests for religion on similar 
terms. A fierce and sanguinary religious zeal, in their eyes, 
atoned for the injustice of taking possession of the property 
of others and slaying them, or reducing them to the hardest 
servitude, unless they became converts to the faith. 

This brutal and hideous barbarism in a civilized Christian 
people is impossible in our humanitarian age, which shows 
how much the ideas of men have been reformed in three cen- 



THE CRUELTY OF THE SPANISH IN AMERICA. 169 

turies. It was not civilization or Christianity ; they are tlie 
chief humanizing and benevolent influences to which progress- 
is due. It was animal force trained by social progress to 
most destructive energy before the ])rinciples of truth and 
justice had become clear enough in the mind to control it. 
The French Jesuits of the next century met and subdued the 
Indian l»y mental, rather than physical, force ; a sense of 
justice usually characterized the Anglo-Americans of the 
eighteenth century and founded the American Eepublic ; and 
our own century is fast making physical force and the pas- 
sions of men the servant of humanity. But the Spaniards, 
in the Moorish war, in the outlawry of the Jews, in the tor- 
turings and burnings of the Inquisition, in the use of fire 
and sword to destroy heresy in the Netherlands, and the 
French in the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the persecu- 
tion of the ituguenots, believed themselves praiseworthy as 
destroyers of the enemies of God and true religion. 

This bloody faith was in full vigor in Southern, Europe 
when the Xew World was discovered, and the resistless force 
of gunpowder and military discipline enabled a handful of 
these stern and mistaken warriors — enthusiastic to extend the 
area of Christianity and win converts at the sword's point — 
to overthrow armies and empires in America. In vain did 
the devoted but naked valor of thousands strive to destroy by 
numbers, and their primitive weapons, the few hundreds of 
the cruel invaders. Gunpowder, discipline and steel were 
irresistible. To the inexperienced natives the invaders — who 
profaned every object of their A-eneration and robbed them of 
their treasures and their liberty with every circumstance of 
cruel violence when they spared their lives — must have seemed 
incarnate fiends. The Spanish conquests and explorations in 
America in the sixteenth century are a painful comment on the 
relio-ious zeal which left ambition and o-reed free for such 
horrible excesses. 

Spanish exploration in the direction of the Mississippi 



170 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Valley was commenced by Juan Ponce de Leon in 1512. He 
had been one of the companions of Columbus. Approaching 
the coast of the continent on Easter Sunday, called by the 
Spaniards Pascua Florida, he named it Florida for that reason 
and because the shore was then brilliant with flowers. It 
was the peninsula which still bears that name. He heard a 
marvelous tale of a fountain whose waters would restore to 
the aged the energies and attractions of youth, and, iired by 
curiosity and ambition, returned to Spain to obtain from the 
king authority to settle and rule the lands he had discovered. 
This obtained, after a long delay, he again approached Florida 
in 1521, in two vessels, with the men and means to found a 
colony. He was received with hostility by the natives, was 
himself mortally wounded in a conflict with them ; many of 
his people were killed, and the enterprise was abandoned. 

In the previous year, De Ayllon, another Spanish captain, 
landed on the coast of South Carolina. He was received by 
the natives with unsuspecting friendliness and hospitality, 
wdiieh he rewarded by decoying nuiny of them on board his 
vessel and at once setting sail for St. Domingo, where he sold 
them as slaves for the plantations and mines. He had the 
hardihood to return to the same place again but was driven 
oft* by the indignant Indians. 

Gold, in small quantity, had been found among the natives 
in these expeditions and another Mexico was believed to lie 
in the interior. While Cortez was pursuing his conquest of 
Mexico, Pamphilo de Narvaez had attempted to rival and 
arrest him. He led several hundred men into Mexico to sup- 
plant Cortez, but was overcome by the skill and rapidity of 
that able captain. His little army joined Cortez who dis- 
missed him without harm other than what he received in 
battle. 

Some years later — in April, 1528 — De Narvaez succeeded 
in collectino; a force of three hundred men and eightv horses,, 
with which he landed on the west coast of Florida. He eagerly 



NAKVAKZ AND DE SOTO IX THK VALLEY. 171 

inquired of the natives t'ortlie "Land of (lold." The simple 
liunters did not know of sucli a country, hut, ahmned hy 
the ])resence of a force so fonuidahle, encouraged liini to 
k>ok for it furtlier on. There heing little worth plunder- 
ing among these roving tribes, he pushed his way through 
the morasses and swamps of this low, sickly region, trying to 
lind a clue to the object of his hopes for six months, when, 
disappointed in his ambition, and ]jerishing with toil and fam- 
ine, he attempted to reach Mexico by sea. He was shipwrecked 
on the coast, and but four or live of his folhAvers, after long 
wanderings, reached their countrymen. 

So many disasters and the great attractions of Mexico, 
Central America and Peru, turned attention from the Valley 
for nearly ten years; but it was still l)elieved that there was, 
somewhere in the Valley ]"ei;-ion, treasure worth v>lunderin2: 
and a people sufficiently civilized to be worthy of the steel of 
the cavalier and the zeal of the priest. Ferdinand de Soto 
had gained fame and immense wealth with Pizarro, in Peru, 
and, being made Governor of Cuba, he determined to increase 
both by the discovery and conquest of this sujiposed wealthy 
nation in the Valley. liaising his standard f »r this purpose 
in Spain, he collected nearly a thousand followers, many of 
them being nol)les and grandees. Elaborate preparations 
were made. Two hundred and thirteen horses, mounted by 
chosen cavaliers, stores of all kinds, amono^ wliich were hoo'S, 
cattle and mules, were provided. It was a much larger and 
better appointed expedition than those with which Cortez and 
Pizarro had conquered the warlike Aztecs, and the well organ- 
ized kingdom of the Incas. De Soto landed in Tampa Bay, 
on the west coast of Florida. This was in June, 1539. 

A company of priests, wdio were to labor for the conversion 
and instruction of the natives, were added to the expedition 
and gave it the air and meaning of a crusade. A pack of 
blood hounds, for tracking fugitive natives, added to the cruel 
significance of the array. This imposing little army, of 



172 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 

wliich great tilings were expected — including a fresh conquest 
•to the church and the state, much renown and great wealth 
— was landed, in high hope, from the five vessels which 
brouo-ht it and its bountii'ul stores. The vessels then went 
back to Cuba, with orders to return to Pensacola Bay with 
fresh supplies in October of the following year. He marched 
north, constantly attacked by the Indians, multitudes of whom 
were slain, and others captured to carry the baggage and per- 
form the menial offices of the camp, De Soto spent the win- 
ter near Tallahassee. A Spaniard, who had been a captive 
among the Indians since the expedition of Xarvaez and 
learned their language, served as interpreter. 

Constant inipiiries for the Land of Gold were usually 
answered by directions to go toward the northwest. One 
poor Indian, more frank than the rest, declared that he knew 
no such country, and was burned alive, as intending to deceive. 
Thus, strewing his route with cruelty and death, this crusad- 
ing captain . pursued his way, when spring opened, toward 
northern Georgia. Most of the tribes, awed by his formid- 
able force, received him with a])])arent friendliness, and many 
with the truest courtesy and kindness. All submitted, with- 
out resistance, to his demands for food and for slaves of both 
sexes to serve his army and carry its baggage. Submission 
did not always save them from shameful treatment. Passing 
through middle Georgia he sent an exploring party into the 
more mountainous north, but, as they found no cities or gold, 
he marched southwest across Alabama. 

About a hundred miles from the Gulf coast was the Indian 
town of Maubila, surrounded with a palisade fortification. 
Its chief received the strangers M'ith the usual courtesies, but 
he was more resolute, warlike, and powerful than the rest, and 
he secretly proposed to destroy his unwelcome guests. A part 
of De Soto's army, with the baggage, was in advance of the 
rest, and no sooner had the stores been lodged within the 
town than the Indians closed the gates and began the attack 



DE SOTO's CRUSADE MISCARRIES. 173 

on the advance gnard. In the snrpn'se and desperate fight 
that ensued 2,500 of the natives are said to have been 
killed. The Europeans concpiered after a struggle of nine 
hours, during which the town was lired, the baggage con- 
sumed, and many men and horses killed. The conquerors 
were in bad plight. The aim of the i)runiising expedition 
luid failed, the provisions and baggage were mostly lost, and 
only hostility could be expected from the Indians in the 
future. 

It was now October, 1540. De Soto had been about a year 
and four months in the country, and his vessels, with supplies, 
lay in Pensacola Bay, not tai- from a hundred miles distant. 
But De Soto was worthy of being called the peer of Cortez 
and Pizarro. If unflinching determination and cruel bravery 
could have given him success, he must have gained it. His 
followers were discouraged, and wished to abandon a hopeless 
c^uest. To go to liis vessels was to renounce the chance of 
fame and riches; he determined to turn his back on supplies 
and home, and make a fresh attempt. His stern decision sub- 
dued discontent and awakened confidence; his followers sub- 
mitted to his will and followed him to the northwest. He 
spent the winter in Mississippi, where a night attack of the 
Indians surprised his troops in their beds, their light cabins 
w^ere set on fire at the first onset, and many escaped only with 
their lives. 

Their means of protection and defense were now greatly 
reduced, but, repairing the damage, as far as possible, they 
wore away the winter in frequent contests w^ith the natives, 
whom they despoiled of food to sustain themselves. In the 
spring De Soto resumed his route, crossed the Mississippi in 
the neighborhood of Memphis, his force still sutficiently for- 
midable for self-protection. They were the first Europeans 
who beheld the Great River. De Soto wandered over the wes- 
tern Valley, in search of a people worthy to be conquered, 
for a year, in vain. He pushed far back in Arkansas and to 



174 TiiE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the borders of Missouri, and returned, broken in health and 
sick at heart at the failure of all liis hopes, to die on the banks 
of the Mississippi, May 21, 1542. His diminished and dis- 
heartened followers now thought of nothing but how to escape 
with life from the fatal Valley. They first sought to reach 
Mexico l)y land, but found the difiiculties so great that they 
soon returned to the river, built boats, in which they descended 
to the Gulf, and coasted along Texas to the settlements of their 
countrvmen. Of the armv, nearlv a thousand strono:, which 
had landed in Florida, three hundred and eleven escaped the 
perils of the v»'ilderness, the vengeance of the Indians, whose 
retaliation they had provoked, and th6 dangers of the Gulf.. 
Al^out twenty years later St. Augustine was founded, and in 
the course of time settlements were commenced in Texas; 
but these were more for purposes of barter with the natives and 
to >1iut out other European nations, by taking nominal j^os- 
session, than from a real design of actual occupation and use. 
The disastrous termination of the two expeditions — of Xarvaez 
and De Soto — convinced the Spaniards that there was no civil- 
ization worthy to be overthrown, and no considerable amount 
of gold within reacli in the Valley. The real wealth of the 
\'alley had no attractions to tliem. It did not encourage 
those who sought unlawful gains, and its savage tribes refused 
to become slaves. Thus, th'e old immoralities and evils of 
European life took no root here. The resources of this region 
could be really developed only by an industrious and thriftv 
people, at first almost entirely agricultural. Any other must, 
have l)ut a slight and temporary hold upon it. When the 
right people came it gave them more than the wealth of the 
Indies. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FRENCH IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

While the Spanish M-ere following up their conquests and 
discoveries of wealth, from Mexico to Chill, bj a severity of 
rule that soon destroyed the blooming civilizations they had 
found, Europe was passing through an imi)ortant change. 
The germs of a new learning and wisdom had matured very 
significant fruit, and the seventeenth century gave evident 
signs of the near a]>proach of a new and more perfect devel- 
opment of civilization. The institutions and habits inherited 
from the past still embarrassed some forms of this growth in 
the Old World, and numy sought both religious and civil 
liberty on the New Continent. The English colonies along 
the Atlantic coast laid the foundation of new institutions early 
in the seventeenth century, which were to be fully organized 
late in the eighteenth, one hundred and fifty years after. 

Changes among the Anglo-Saxons were the measured and 
consistent result of tendencies firmly established in their char- 
acter, and develo])ed from the primitive institutions of the 
race. They reached a late but most noble maturity. The 
French, on the contrary, were quick to respond to a new 
movement or tendency from without, and, for the time, 
became its most com])lete embodiment. Rapid in thought 
and enthusiastic in following out a theory to the farthest 
results permitted by circumstances, the pulse of change was 
always first felt by them, and its direction indicated more 
clearly than by any other European nation. Anglo-Saxons were 
averse to change until all was ripe for it; the French at once 
discarded as much of the old as possible, and quickly adjusted 
themselves to the new — putting theory into practice with 
rapid completeness. They were the first in the eighth century 

175 



176 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 

to catoh the spirit of a new modern civilization, and hastened 
to organize it in the great empire of Charlemagne. When 
the concentration of power in a single administration was 
interrupted by the growth of Feudalism, they developed that 
system in greater completeness than in any other country in 
Europe; when the strengthening of the royal power was 
recpiired to overcome the abuses of that system, the French 
king became soonest an absolute ruler; and when theories of 
republican liberty were promulgated in the latter part of the 
eighteenth century, the eagerness of the French people to 
embody them overthrew the throne, the nobility and the 
priesthood by one vast explosion. 

This French habit of catching the first breath of social 
and political or other change, reducing it to a consistent sys- 
tem, and at once seeking the end with too little regard to the 
means, was very characteristically shown in America in the 
seventeenth century by many of the most prominent represent- 
atives of that nation who visited the Xew World. The plans 
of Champlain, and of the French Jesuits who accompanied him,, 
at once took in all of the continent with which they were 
acquainted, and which they thought it desirable to control. 
Instead of building up quietly and solidly on the coast, as 
did the English, their first care was to penetrate to the inte- 
rior and form relations with the Indian tribes nearly a thou- 
sand miles from the sea. Important missions, that had a 
political as well as a religious aim, were immediately com- 
menced on Lake Huron, above the western center of the Val- 
ley, to which the English did not attempt to penetrate for 
more than a hundred years. 

The Age of Physical Force had culminated in Europe, and 
the Age of Mental Force began to dawn. As usual, the 
French at once recognized the new tone, and became its first 
eminent representatives. The system of the Jesuits was one 
remarkable form under which mental and moral force was 
first substituted for physical coercion. The nation which, in 



THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH EXPLORATION. 177 

the last half of the sixteenth century, produced the horrors 
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in the first half of the sev- 
enteenth, adopted a mild and hinnane Indian policy that made 
almost every red man their friend, and furnished a long list of 
Jesuit missionaries, animated with the lofty spirit of martyrs. 
They shrunk from no dangers or sufferings, and calmly sub- 
mitted to the cruelest tortures and death, to which, indeed, 
they looked forward when going hundreds of miles from all 
civilized companionship, among the most ruthless of mankind. 

This spirit in the French commanders and priests was pre- 
cisely the opposite of that which had moved the same classes 
of Spaniards in the previous century, and, usually, in the 
long run, secured the absolute trust and devotion of the 
Indian tribes. It was in this spirit that the French under- 
took the exploration of the Mississippi Valley, about the 
year 1673. The Jesuit missionaries had, some time before, 
established missions near the outlet of Lake Superior ami on 
Green Bay. Marquette, a French priest, accompanied by 
Joliet. a trader, and five other Frenchmen, aided by the 
Indians of Green Bay, carried two frail Indian canoes across 
the portage separating the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, and 
floated down the latter stream to the Mississippi, undeterred 
by the earnest remonstrances of the Indians, who represented 
that they were rushing into unknown but terrible dangers. 
They were the first white men to furrow the upper waters of 
the Great River. 

Amazed, delighted yet awed by the vast and magnificent 
solitude, they descended the river to the Arkansas, not far 
from where the unfortunate, but ruthless. De Soto had met 
his fate and been buried in its waters. They discovered no 
traces of men on the way until they reached the lower bound- 
ary of Iowa. Here a pathway showed signs of Innnan pi-es- 
ence. They came as friends to the Indians of the Valley; 
for it was the principle of the French in America through 
this century to make the red men their allies and aids. They 
13 



178 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

relied on the influence of mental superiority to control them. 
Marquette and his companions did not, therefore, hesitate to 
follow up these traces. Fourteen miles, it is related, from 
the Mississippi they found a band of the tribe of the Illinois. 
The fame and good name of the French had preceded them 
in the northern Valley, and they were received with friendly 
and solemn enthusiasm. These Indians freely gave all the 
information and aid they could to the white strangers. 

Cheered and comforted by the sympathy of the simple 
natives, and furnished by them with the " Pipe of Peace," 
to secure them a friendly reception from the fierce tribes 
below, they proceeded on their way ; but the route was too 
long and the unknown dangers were judged too great to 
attempt to reach the mouth of the river. From the Arkan- 
sas they retraced their weary way to the mouth of the Illinois, 
which they ascended to Chicago, holding friendly intercourse 
with such of the prairie tribes as they met. Launching their 
barks on Lake Michigan they coasted back to Green Bay. 
Such was the adventurous and trustful daring of the French 
Jesuits. 

The Great River and the beautiful Valley were now defi- 
nitely comprehended, and the genius of the French for bold 
and far-reaching plans at once sprung into play. In Canada 
the French were confined to the St. Lawrence and its tributa- 
ries by the English settlements of New England and New 
York. More than one French governor cherished the plan 
of attempting to gain possession of the valley of the Hudson 
for the sake of a better seaport on the Atlantic than was fur- 
nished by the St. Lawrence, which was closed by the ice 
several months in the year. These plans it was impossible to 
execute from the hostility of the Iroquois tribes and the 
superior development of the English colonies. They now 
formed the great plan of connecting the settlements on the 
St. Lawrence with the Great Valley, and so surrounding the 
English colonies from the rear. 



LA SAI.I.K AND HIS I'LANS FOR THK VALLKV. 179 

This idea first heetinie a clear and fixed j)urpose with 
Robert Cavalier de La Salle, lie possessed the true French 
srenins for bold o-eneralizatioiis with a resoluteness and active 
energy that would be daunted by no misfortunes or difficul- 
ties. He was fired M'ith a lofty enthusiasm by the re])ort of 
Marquette and Joliet, immediately conceived a grand enter- 
prise, and spent the remainder of his life in a vain struggle 
with men, nature and accident, to realize it. In his clear 
practical sense, his manly resolution and inflexible obstinacy, 
he was perhaps more English than French. Too unbending 
to conciliate, he found many and powerful enemies. But for 
them he would probably have succeeded in firmly planting 
the wrong jieople on the Great Kiver and its branches, and 
in greatly changing the destiny of the Yalley, as well as 
in deferring considerably the rapidity of European as well as 
American development. That ho and his successors failed was 
M'ell for the liberties and progress of the world ; for the com- 
plete success of his comprehensive ])lans would have made the 
fairest part of North America, with its incalculable wealth, 
French instead of Anglo-Saxon ; and this New France, or 
Louisiana — colonized a hundred years too soon— w^ould have 
included too many of the vices of the Europe of the Middle- 
Ages. A watchful intelligence, with a steady purpose, still 
shielded the Yalley from premature settlement. 

We can not fail to sympathize with the disasters and disap- 
pointments of La Salle and to feel indignant with the bitter 
enemies who neutralized so much fortitude, heroic energy 
and patriotic ambition, although his success would have been 
a great misfortune for America. 

Sustained by the approval of the Governor of Canada and 
the French ministry. La Salle, about 167S, collected his 
resources, mortgaged his estates and borrowed of his friends, 
to equip an expedition for thoroughly exploring the Great 
River. The length of the route, the malice of his enemies, 
and the unfriendliness of circumstances, interfered with his 



IbO THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

designs again and again ; but difficulty only served to 
strengthen his resolution. He built a vessel of sixty tons 
above the cataract of Niagara and freighted it with furs on 
the borders of Lake Michigan. The sale of the furs was to fur- 
nish him fresh supplies for his expedition. The vessel and 
furs were lost, and various other disasters occurred to delay 
his voyage down the Mississippi to its mouth until 1682. 
Arrived then at the mouth of the river he solemnly took 
possession of the country in the name of the French king, 
Louis XIV. 

He had already sent Hennepin, a Franciscan priest, to ex- 
plore the upper river. Hennepin ascended as far as the Falls 
of St, Anthony. La Salle established a fort and trading-house 
on the niinois Kiver, near Peoria, He had set his resolute 
will on the establishment of a colony at the mouth of the river ; 
and he now retraced his steps, as fast as the difficulties of the 
ascent against the current and his own illness permitted, and 
regained Mackinaw, The security of his little colony in 
Illinois and the protection of his Indian allies from the 
Iroquois, whose war parties roamed over the broad prairies 
almost to the Mississippi, detained him another year in the 
Valley, when he returned to France. He had passed over 
more than 4,000 miles and back, through the territory of 
multitudes of Indian tribes, and safely returned, mostly in 
frail canoes, with but twenty-two companions, and depending, 
in large part, on the hospitality of the Indians for supplies of 
food. Evidently, the humane and friendly spirit of the French 
brought its reward. 

Kecei\-ed with honor at the French court, in spite of the active 
eiforts of formidable enemies. La Salle soon organized an expe- 
dition for founding a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. 
He reached the neighborhood of the river with his vessels, con- 
taining 2S0 persons, soldiers or settlers, by the first of the 
year 1685 ; but the commander of the vessels was in the inter- 
est of his enemies, they missed the mouth of the river by 



IBERVILLE FOLLOWS THE I'LAXS OF LA SALLK. 181 

mailing too far M'est, the commander Avould not return to 
search for it, and landed La Salle and his colony on the 
unknown shore of Texas. And now misfortune followed 
misfortune. The Indians proved unfriendly, liis store shi]» 
was wrecked and a large part of his supplies lost, and other 
stores were carried off by the traitorous commander who 
sailed for France, leaving La Salle and his colony in tlieii' 
great distress. Seeing nu alternative, after two years spent in 
seekino; the River and struo:o:lin2: ag-ainst disaster, he started 
for Canada to procure aid. Calamity roused the evil passions 
of some of his companions, and, in the M'ilds of Texas, La 
Salle was murdered by one of his own people, March IT, 1687. 
His colonists were mostly massacred by the Indians, and 
thus, of the heroic efforts of so many years, little remained 
but a knowledge of the Talley and of its beauty. 

In 1699, D'Iberville, a French Canadian naval hero, suc- 
ceeded in accomplishing what La Salle, by no fault of his 
own, had failed of doing. He entered the mouth of the 
river, March 2, and established near it a permanent colony 
of hardy Canadians. For nearly a century a large part of 
the Valley, belonged nominally, to the French. 

D'Iberville built his fort in the last year of the seventeenth 
century at Biloxi, some distance east of the mouth of the 
Mississippi. In the next year a fort was erected on the river 
above its mouth, and Le Sueur ascended to the mouth of 
the St. Peters, in Minnesota, in search of mines. In 1701 
Mobile was founded by D'Iberville. French priests, traders 
and '' coiireurs des bois"' — wood runners, or hunters — became 
familiar with a large part of the Valley east of the Missis- 
sippi. Could La Salle have lived and received the full co- 
operation of the government and people that his broad plans 
merited, French power might have been firmly settled in the 
Valley. The settlement of Canada was due to the energy 
and capacity of Champlain. An able leader, spared to guide 
and plan for twenty or thirty vears, could have done still more 
for Louisiana. 



182 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

But the French Government was too absorbed in European 
politics, court intrigues, financial difficulties, and foreign wars^ 
to pay much attention to its American possessions till it was 
too late ; monopolies and official corruption, both at home and in 
the colonies, prevented healthy growth, and emigration was not 
made attractive. Besides, the French people loved "La Belle 
France " too much to emigrate in large numbers. Inspired, 
for the moment, by brilliant theories and prospects, the French 
have often undertaken more than they could reasonably hope 
to accomplisli. With only spasmodic and inadequate care 
from home, arbitrarily governed in the colony, a few thousand 
colonists were lost in the wilderness and ambition and indus- 
try shrunk to narrow limits. 

Anglo-Saxon energy and self-dependence would probably 
have laid a broad foundation for future growth. The pliant 
yielding to circumstances and the courteous tact that recom- 
mended the French to the Indians sprung from traits of charac- 
ter that unfitted them for overcoming the great difficulties of 
such a situation. There were too few Champlains and La Salles, 
the Jesuits became ambitious of wealth and power, lost their 
great religious zeal for the conversion of the Indians in the 
Yalley — whom they, indeed, found most unpromising material 
for organizing into strong communities — and became unpop- 
ular both in Europe and America. The embarrassments to 
individual enterprise in the French colonies left a blight upon 
them which they bore with a tranquility and patience not 
favorable to progress. 

All these and some other causes prevented the French occu- 
pation of the Yalley from becoming much more than nomi- 
nal, and still left it free for the energetic agriculturists wha 
were, by and by, to find their way to it over the Alleghanies.. 
So slowly did the interior settlements increase that a census,, 
taken in 1799, showed " Upper Louisiana" to contain less 
than .5,000 white inhabitants. That same hundred years had 
seen the English on the Atlantic grow up from a few scattered 
settlements into a great nation. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ENGLISH EXPLORATIONS IN THE VALLEY IN THE EIGHTEENTH 

CENTURY. 

While Spanish visitors to the Valley in the sixteenth cen- 
tnry were in search of treasures which would enrich the adven- 
turer, and of kingdoms worthy to be conquered and Christian- 
ized by the sword, and French enterprises looked to permanent 
occupation through alliance with, and conversion of, the 
Indians by persuasion, the English intruder paid no more 
attention to the natives than was unavoidable, and rather 
sought a home than the realization of far-reaching plans. 
He was not an adventurer but an emigrant ; he was founding 
a commonwealth in diligent, serious earnest. This was a 
very modern feature and indicated a rapid evolution of the 
principles of true civilization. 

The revolt against the foolish and repressive policy of Euro- 
pean governments was based in England on a widespread 
intelligence and the resolute character of the individual 
Englishman. In France it was a flowing and ebbing wave 
that now yielded passively to obstacles and again gathered 
all its sti-ength to rush against and overthrow them. During 
the first three quarters of the eighteenth century the French 
peo])le were gathering their energies for one of these fearful 
upheavals in the last quarter ; and the English in America 
were growing up into strength to found liberal institutions 
modeled on those of the mother country. When the time 
came they stood u]) to assert and defend their liberties with 
(juiet and resolute dignity — without wrath but also without 
fear. 

Such was the progress of the eighteenth century. It laid 
the foundations for an admirable Republic in America and 

183 



184 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

for a transtbrmation of Europe no less remarkable in the 
nineteenth century. We may consider the Anglo-American 
as the leading representativ^e of civilization. The isolation 
in a common comparative poverty, community of dangers, 
struggles against difRculties, and the disappearance of the 
more glaring social distinctions from ordinary life, tended to 
consolidate the colonies, to increase their sense of justice, to 
make them considerate and impartial in sympathy. If the 
Anglo-American was far from being complete in these virtues, 
they were yet comparatively strong in him. They did not 
give him the suave courtesy and politeness of the French, but 
liis good will was hearty and real. 

Yet, notwithstanding his desire to deal fairly with the 
Indians, according to his own rather stiff notions of fairness, 
he rarely lived on really pleasant terms with them long at a 
time, at least on any other base than that of fear. lie made 
no attempt to reduce them to servitude like the Spanish, he 
did not often try to make tools of them like the French, and 
generally was willing to give them what he considered an 
equivalent for the lands he occupied, though often driving a 
very hard bargain with the thoughtless and unbusiness-like 
natives, who, when they realized all the results, were apt to 
repudiate it as great injustice. 

With such a revolt of the Indian he had little sympathy, 
holding that a bargain once made was irrevocable, and punish- 
ing Indian disregard of such arrangements with stern severity. 
He could not enter into the feelings of the Indian like the 
Frenchman, and humor his weaknesses or his ignorance, and 
the Indian quite failed to appreciate civilized virtues. His 
quiet, unceasing industry and the steady, resistless spread of 
his settlements, were full of menace and terror to the Indian. 
The wild hunter, to whom he had no essential ill will, but to 
whom a sudden change of habits was impossible, was obliged 
to retire before him. The favorite fields and forests, where 
his fathers had roved without restraint, were soon con- 



CAUSES OF INDIAN HOSTILITY TO AMERICANS. 1S5 

verted into farms and dotted with villages and towns. The 
Indian's eye was ofiended by the sight of a smiling plenty so 
a<'-reeable to the civilized man, and his heart swelled with fear 
and rage when he saw the pioneers of this formidable emigra- 
tion prospecting over his cherished hnnting gronnds in the 
Valley. 

The English were neither roving in search of fabulous 
wealth nor seeking for allies ; they were building a future — 
too busy and too strong to court or fear the Indian. If he 
retaliated on the whites, by bloody massacres, the loss of his 
woods and prairies, he was punished with unrelenting severity 
and, obliged to move farther away. The order, the freedom, 
the prosperity of the Anglo-American, was the doom of the 
wild hunter. He would none of it, he loathed and cursed 
it and fled before it, after having, by many a vengeful 
deed of blood, sought in vain to stay the tide of prosperous 
civilization. Tlius the English exploration of the Valley was 
met by the most determined hostility and the progress of set- 
tlement could be maintained only by an approach to the 
extermination of the Indian tribes. 

Even the haughty and bloody Spaniard drew out toward 
himself from the Indian heart a less deep and bitter resent- 
ment than did the English explorer and settler. The Indians 
were warriors themselves, accustomed to cruel and barl)arous 
deeds, and could appreciate and admire the brilliant courage 
and prowess of the roving Spaniards, who seldom allowed 
victory to escape them. They also were accustomed to follow 
victory by slaughter and the slavery of the captives ; and, 
notwithstanding the more rational and more politic French 
style of making converts to the faith and gaining over the 
Indians to their interest, instead of crushing opposition by 
brute force, these gallant gentlemen and devoted priests 
could be ruthless and cruel to their enemies in a style quite 
appreciable to the Indian, for the old spirit of the crusades 
and the incpiisition had not yet wholly died out in this vigor- 



186 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ous Catholic race. Though turned into a new channel by 
the exqnisitelj skillful and subtle policy of the Jesuits and the 
still more hunume spirit of other Catholic priests, it still 
i-eniained to persecute and proscribe the Huguenot, and to 
add tlie intensity of hate to the animosity felt toward tlieir 
])()litical foes of ISTew England and New York. 

But the Englishman was a daring soldier only by necessity. 
He did not attract these children of nature by ruthless con- 
(piest nor by sympathetic condescension. Busy and reserved, 
he showed them little courtesy, which greatly wounded their 
pride and self-respect. He troubled himself jlittle about them 
unless they intruded on him, when he was haughty and con- 
temptuous; or when they committed injuries, which he pun- 
ished with a severity that seemed to him just. The more the 
English settlements prospered, the higher the star of civiliza- 
tion rose, and the more industry, art, commercial and political 
lil)erty flourished, the less room was there for the wild and 
wasteful Indian hunter, the more helpless, dependent and 
degraded he became. He would not, as, indeed, he could not, 
accept civilization, and share in the hopes and prosperity 
which the New Age promised to the New World. The grow- 
ing benevolence and pity of a people daily 'becoming more 
enlightened and just to tlieir kind' in general, could not be 
expressed to his comprehension, for the space required by an 
industrious population under the stimulus of an unexampled 
prosperity pushed him further and further from his ancient 
hunting grounds and the graves of his fathers, and his resent- 
ful retaliations made desolating punishments unavoidable. 
Thus the most enlightened and humane era of exploration — 
so far as the real character and purposes of the explorers were 
concerned — became the most wasting and ruinous to the Indian 
tribes of the Yalley. To this statement there were, after a 
time, and far into our own century, some exceptions, but none 
during early periods. 

English interest in the Great Valley commenced just before 



EARLY ENGLISH EXPLORATION IN THE VALLEY. 187 

the close of th^ seventeenth century. As D'Iberville returned 
from his first exploration of the lower course of the Missis- 
sippi, in 1699, he found two English vessels near the mouth 
of the river. They had been sent by William III., king of 
England, to take possession of the Valley by fortifying the 
mouth of its principal stream. Finding themselves antici- 
pated by the French, they withdrew. xVljout 1690 the settle- 
ments of Virginia had extended their outposts to the foot of 
the Blue Kidge, and begun to pass over into the Shenandoah 
Valley, in the southern part of which are found the head- 
waters of various tributaries of the Ohio; and they soon 
became anxious to know what lay beyond. In 1710 Governor 
Spottswood, of Virginia, led a party across the watershed, and 
is said to have ffiven their name to the Cumberland Moun- 
tains. Others refer the name to Dr. Thomas Walker, an 
explorer of 1747 or 1748. The Cherokees had been visited 
by an English trader in 1690, and in 1730 Adair, of South 
Carolina, visited them and some other tribes. In the same 
year John Sailing, of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, was 
captured by the Cherokees, and carried to their country; was 
captured again, while out with one of their hunting parties, 
by the Illinois tribe, liberated by the French, at Kaskaskia, 
and returned home, by way of Canada, after an absence of 
six years. 

The publications of the French explorers, the above men- 
tioned and other occasional glimpses of English adventurers 
and traders, and the accounts of the Indians inflamed the 
desire of the Anglo-American public to penetrate to these, 
evidently the best, lands of the continent. But the circum- 
stances were long unfavorable. The French home govern- 
ment began to take an interest in the Mississippi Valley, and 
the Canadian authorities took more and more pains to cul- 
tivate the friendship and alliance of the Indian tribes about 
the lakes and the headwaters of tlie Ohio. As the French 
soldiers, trappers and traders were agreeable companions as 



188 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

well as useful allies of these tribes, and did not threaten to 
dispossess them of their hunting groiinds, the Indians believed 
thej could be received with safety as they were with pleasure. 
But English settlements, whose thrifty and rapid growth threat- 
ened to deprive them of their lands, were dreaded by them as 
ominous of evil. The French took care to keep this jealousy 
alive, and even English traders were unwelcome to them. 
This, however, was partly and gradually overcome by the 
cheaper rate at which these traders supplied them with fire- 
arms and trinkets, which, being a monopoly in Canada and 
an unembarrassed trade among the English, could be furnished 
by the latter at a cheaper rate Avith the same profit. Gradu- 
ally these traders worked their M^ay across the border and 
among the tribes, here and there. They were, the first real 
explorers of the Yalley in the English interest, and, to some 
extent, raised up a counter influence against the French 
among the Indians, particularly in the south. The French 
liad taken their measures in the northeast so wisely that the 
middle of the century appoached before traders ventured very 
far west of the Alleghanies. 

The authorities of the central English colonies early began 
to take measures for acquiring Indian titles to territory in the 
Yalley. In 1684 the Governments of New York and Virginia 
made a treaty with the Iroquois, at Albany, in which they 
procured a deed of sale of the Ohio Yalley, which these war- 
riors rather vaingloriously claimed as theirs by right of con- 
quest. That title was sought to be strengthened by another 
treaty made with them, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744. 
In pursuance of this idea, and in view of the conquest of all 
the French possessions in North America, soon to be under- 
taken, the English home government, in 1749, authorized the 
formation of a company, to which it assigned a large tract of 
land in the Yalley. The gentlemen of Yirginia saw in tliis 
plan of interior settlement personal gain and a great future 
for their commonwealth, and eagerly hastened the prelimin- 



THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH WAR IN THE VALLEY. 189 

arv steps by holding councils with the Indians and commenc- 
ing explorations. 

Christopher Gist, the agent of this "Ohio Company," 
Col. Geo. Croghan, Indian agent for the English Government, 
George Washington, then rising into notice in the pnblic 
service of the Colonial Government of Virginia, and a mnl- 
titude of Indian traders studied the Upper Ohio Valley in 
the interest of future settlement. Virginia claimed this 
reo-ion by virtue of her original charter and warned off the 
French ; but the Canadian authorities took immediate steps 
to protect their claims to it. The agents of the British Gov- 
ernment, of Virginia and of the Ohio Company had taken 
pains to attach as many of the tribes near the Ohio to their 
interest as possible ; but the French increased their forces, 
erected a line of forts from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh, captured 
a British trading post lately established on the Miami, and 
strengthened themselves in the central Valley. 

In the last part of the year 1753, Gov. Dinwiddle sent a re- 
monstrance to the commander of the French forces on the Ohio 
by the hands of George "Washington. This effort, of course, 
proved a tailure and was merely a formal preliminary to the 
active contest. Both parties now struggled to make the lirst 
point by getting firm hold of the peninsula at the junction 
of the streams forming the Ohio — now Pittsburgh. The 
French succeeded and held the place with so strong a force 
that Washington, who returned in the spring of lT5-i, at the 
head of -lOO men, was too weak to drive them out, was attacked 
in his intrenchments, and obliged to capitulate. This was 
followed in the next year by an expedition under General 
Braddock, of the British army, which, for the frontier, was 
large and well appointed and strong enough to overwhelm 
the French. But Braddock, unacquainted with Indian war- 
fare, and too obstinate to take counsel, was ambuscaded before 
he reached the fort and his army defeated with great slaughter 
— about 800 being killed and wounded. He was himself 



190 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

fatally wounded and died four days afterward. Tins memora- 
ble defeat occurred June 19, 1755. The French remained in 
undisturbed possession of the upper Valley for several years, 
while the two nations contended around Lakes Ontario and 
Cham plain and in the valley of the St. Lawrence for the 
mastery of America. The English were at length successful 
and all the territory claimed by the French east of the 
Mississippi passed, by a general caj)itulation, into English 
hands. 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE Indian's defense of his hunting grounds against the 

FRENCH AND ENGLISH. 

The relations of tlie French and the Indians in the seven- 
teenth century liad been extended and maintained bj the 
missionary zeal of the Jesuits. The arrogance of the noble 
officer as well as the rudeness ot the common soldier had 
been toned down to general courtesy, partly by this influence, 
partly by the native politeness and pliancy of the race, and 
also by the pressing need of Indian allies. The English set- 
tlements south of them were politically their rivals and often 
their enemies by frequent wars between the two mother coun- 
tries ; and a bottomless gull of religious difference separated 
them in sympathy. Antagonism in almost every direction 
seemed to make them mortal foes even in formal peace. 
Canada was always weak in numbers and poor in resources 
compared with the vigorous and prosperous colonies from 
England. The Canadian rulers, therefore, with much pains 
and skill, cultivated the friendship of the Indians. The Iro- 
cpiois alone, long resisted their arts and their arms. 

But circumstances were changed in the southern Yalley 
M'hen, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, the 
French took possession of the mouth of the Mississippi and 
built up considerable settlements as compared with those of 
Canada a hundred years before. Communication with France 
was more constant, a commercial spirit and political ambition 
had taken the place of missionary zeal, and the corruption 
and intrigue which were becoming so prevalent at the French 
court affected the morals of the colony. The officials ceased 
to feel dependent on Indian good will and sometimes treated 
them with contemptuous injustice. This was the more 

191 



192 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

impolitic that the tribes on tlie east bank of the river were 
almost as tierce and warlike as the Iroquois, and English 
ti-aders from the Atlantic coast passed among them, courted 
tlieir ffood will and sought to weaken French influence over 
them, aidins: them with advice and assistance when attacked. 
The English settlements were distant and thej had not begun 
to fear them, while the French were near and in danger of 
becoming formidable. 

There were French settlements among the Natchez on the 
bank of the i-i\er ; that tribe grew jealous and discontented, 
and secretly concerted a rising with other tribes to expel 
them. This outbreak was hastened by the imprudent effront- 
ery of the commander of the French post, who required the 
Natchez to remove their principal' village because he wanted 
to occupy its site. The indignant tribe made all their arrange- 
ments in the most complete privacy, suddenly fell on the 
French, Nov. 29, 1729, and massacred two hundred in a day. 
The colony was strong enough to avenge it, which was accom- 
plished with a severity and barbarity worthy of De Soto or of 
the Indians themselves. Hundreds were slain and their 
venerated chief Sun, with 400 of his followers, captured and 
sold in St. Domingo as slaves. The tribe was broken up and 
scattered among the neighboring Indian commnnities. A 
remnant that still held together in the wilds of Arkansas was 
no sooner discovered than it was attacked and massacred. 

This was a very different policy from that which had 
secured the ijood will and aid of the tribes of Canada and 
the West in the previous century and the French suffered 
much from it. The Chickasaws never contracted a solid 
peace with them, and their hostility rendered the passage of 
the river, whose eastern bank above Natchez they held, unsafe. 
Though awed, perhaps, by the fate of the Natchez, they were 
strong in numbers and resolution and obtained arms, ammu- 
nition and other conveniences from the English traders. The 
settlement of Georgia, about this time, by Gen. Oglethorpe, 



FKENCH AND INDIAN WARS IN THE SOUTH. 1^5 

made Savannah a more convenient depot of snpplies than 
had before existed, and the nnfortnnate French policy, wliich 
alienated the tribes, rendered them more amenable to English 
influence. 

The French undertook to chastise the Chickasaws and dis- 
perse the dangers which threatened the passage of the river 
from New Orleans to Illinois. After long preparation one 
expedition from New Orleans and another from Illinois 
marched against them. These expeditions failed to act in 
concert, the Illinois troops were disastrously routed, and 
the Chickasaw^s intrenched themselves against Bienville who 
led the force from below. Assisted by English traders, they 
resisted all Bienville's efforts and he retired discomfited, 
leaving the Indians triumphant and French prestige tarnished. 
Three years later, Bienville gathered a force of 1,200 French 
troops and 2,000 Indian allies and again advanced against the 
Chickasaws. These wily Indians now sued for peace wdiich 
the French general, who made a long stop in the region of 
Memphis, and wliose troops were much weakened by sickness 
in that unhealthy climate, gladly granted, and he withdrew 
with no effective security against further hostility. The 
Indians were still masters of the situation. In 1752, they 
formed an alliance, by treaty, with the English, who were 
preparing for the reduction of Canada. De Vaudreuil, then 
the French governor of Louisiana, undertook to chastise them 
by the destruction of their towns, but failed in the attempt 
and was obliged to retreat. 

The English repeated in the Gulf States the policy of the 
French in Canada and Illinois — sought the alliance of the 
Indians and treated them with consideration. As they did 
not yet undertake to make settlements very far from the 
Atlantic coast, and were known chiefly by their flattering 
speeches and the advantages their trade conferred on the 
tribes, they were as successful as had been the French in the 
North. French and English policies were here reversed. 
13 



194 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

English traders often established themselves among them, 
took Indian wives and adopted their manner of life. The son 
©f a Scotch trader by an Indian wife became, in after years, 
an edncated, able and powerfnl chief among the Creeks. The 
inflnence thus acquired by friendly intercourse and conformity 
tt> Indian habits was exerted against the French, though not 
ill open warfare except in the case of the Chickasaws, and 
French and English agents and traders com])eted near the 
Golf for the favor and peltry of the red man. The cheap- 
Bess of English goods, which were subject to the embarrass- 
raent of no monopoly, and the vigor with which the English- 
man was accustomed to perform every task he undertook, gave 
him the advantage over the French, who never acquired 
much influence in the eastern ])art of the lower Yalley, and 
were not strong enough to make a diversion iu favor of 
Canada when the English Government seriously undertook 
to conquer it. 

Yet, in Illinois and about the Great Lakes, the tribes were 
strongly attached to the French. Though less courted and 
flattered than formerly, and more attracted to the English by 
better terms of trade, they were shrewd enough to see that it 
would be a great advantage to them, as the Iroquois had dis- 
cov^ered, a hundred and thirty years before, to have two nations 
of Europeans among them who were rivals for their favor. 
Tliey knew something of the strong development of the cen- 
tral English colonies, and dreaded to have the French with- 
draw, begiiming already to feel a dim presentiment of their 
fate. The more sagacious of the red race were deeply afflicted 
when, in 1763, the treaty of peace, which followed the capitu- 
lation of the French in Canada, ceded the whole of the east- 
ern Valley, including the regions of the lakes and the posts 
on the Ohio, to the English. 

Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, had his home in the neigh- 
borhood of Detroit. When that post was delivered \\p to the 
English he was about lifty years old — in the full maturity of 



THE PRELUDE TO I'ONTIAc's \V\K. 195 

powers which showed that individual talent is of no race or 
condition. His own and other tribes from near the lakes had 
given ready assistance to the French, and chiefly contributed 
to Braddock's defeat. Regretfully he had seen that victory 
neutralized when, November 24, 1758, an English army, 
"better led. in which George Washington had an important 
command, approached Fort Duquesne, which his people had 
defended, and which the now feeble garrison, insutiicient in 
numbers to hold, set on fire and abandoned. One by one the 
posts on the Ohio had fallen into English hands. 

Immediately after this the theft of some horses, by Chero- 
kee warriors returning from the English army, which they 
had accompanied as allies to the attack of P'ort Duquesne, 
was severely retaliated by the settlers who had suffered the 
loss, who killed fourteen of the lawless Cherokees. The nation, 
infuriated by this bloody deed, and glad of an excuse for attack 
on intruders into their neighborhood, immediately commenced 
a desolating war on the scattered settlers who had lately built 
their cabins under the eastern shadow of the mountains. 
Fort Loudon had been built, about 1756, in the Cherokee 
country. The people settled near it, or straggling from it. 
were butchered, and the Fort beseiged. A force sent to the 
relief of the garrison w^as so roughly treated in the battle of 
the Etchowee, on the headwaters of the Little Tennessee, that 
it retreated, leaving the Fort to its fate. The famished garri- 
son capitulated, but were attacked after leaving the Fort to 
return to the colonies, and many of them killed while the rest 
were held captive. In the next year Col. Grant, of the Brit- 
ish army, led a strong force into the Cherokee country, defeated 
the Indians in an obstinate battle, laid waste their fields and 
destroyed their towns. This severe vengeance, the surveys 
that foreboded English settlement, and the fatal certainty with 
which settlements spread when commenced, filled Pontiac with 
alarm for his race. 

He was a truly royal savage, endowed with all the qualities 



190 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

which secure influence to an Indian chief. His name was 
known and revered by every Wild Hunter from the Missis- 
sippi to New York, and from Hudson's Bay to Georgia. Pon- 
tiac tirst came into personal relations with the English on the 
delivery of Detroit to them by the French. He approached 
and studied them with the skill and penetration of a trained 
diplomatist, and at once saw the fundamental difterence be- 
tween them and the French, with whom he had been familiar. 
French aims were large and vague, did not threaten speedy 
dispossession of the Indian, and French courtesy easily avoided 
a too oftensive expression of disgust at habits displeasing to the 
civilized man. The French peasantry, to whom few sources 
of gain were open, quietly cultivated a little patch of soil, 
showed little enterprise or ambition in those days, took life 
easily and were cordially friendly with the Indians, with whom 
they often hunted, trapped and fought. 

The Anglo-American was a man of business, founding a 
home and a future for himself, and not unmindful of the 
future of his race — indeed, beginning seriously to think and 
act for the welfare of his adopted country. Order, industry 
and security w^ere inseparable from the thought of the aver- 
age Anglo-Saxon. He represented the energetic, thoughtful, 
personal thrift that was soon to become the characteristic of 
a new and higher form of civilization. Indian virtues and 
Indian vices were expressed in a form highly repellant to 
him. The Teutonic races are distinguished for energy and 
directness. They wanted, in America, the smooth and con- 
ciliating exterior of the French, and did not very much restrain 
their disgust at Indian vanity, brutality, and the want of self- 
respect that permitted drunkenness and beggary without 
shame. But the Indian had a rude sense of self-respect and 
of justice, which the English did not comprehend or regard. 

If the Englishman and the Anglo-American stood at the 
head of a deeper, broader, and more important phase of civil- 
ization in the eighteenth century than the Frenchman of the 



PONTIAC COMMENCES THE WAR AT DETROIT. 197 

seventeenth, it was still in the rough, and would take long to 
reach its highest expression, as sketched in the opening of 
the " Declaration " of 1776, which is still only partially put 
in practice. The Indian was elbowed aside, and his weaknesses 
and vices treated with unconcealed contempt. His violation 
of treaties which he had not understood, the injustice of which 
he too late comprehended, was visited with severe punishment 
by the sword, and still severer punishment in ejectment 
from his hunting grounds. The Indian constantly felt himself 
humiliated and swindled, and the inhabitants of the border 
who were in contact with him, and liable to receive the full 
bloody consequences of his resentment, could feel no sym- 
pathy for his character and habits, and considered the sever- 
est treatment of him only just. 

Pontiac completely represented his race in their sympathies 
and antipathies; his great, though untaught, intelligence ena- 
bled him to see all the danger to the Indian of an advance of 
the English westward, while his experience was too limited to 
see how hopeless would be the attempt at resistance. Pie 
determined to organize the tribes, expel or destroy the hated 
invaders, and defend the West from them. His influence was 
all powerful with most of the tribes, and he arranged the 
details of a rising and plans for the simultaneous capture of 
all the forts. On the 7th of May, 1763, he attempted, in 
person, to surprise the post at Detroit. His plan was betrayed 
and Major Gladwin, the commander, was prepared to meet it. 
All the other posts were attacked, some eight or ten falling 
into the hands of the Indians, in most cases with circum- 
stances of sickening barbarity. Having failed to surprise 
Detroit, Pontiac laid siege to it. Contrary to all the habits 
of the Indians, it was beleagured seven months — from early 
May until November. Fort Pitt was attacked, and a bloody 
battle fought with a force marching to its relief. 

Detroit and Fort Pitt, however, both held out. The 
resources, discipline and skill of the white man triumphed 



198 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

over the sudden rush and unexpected persistence of the tribes. 
The Senecas, of New York, one of the " nations " of the Iro- 
quois confederacy, joined their efforts to those of Pontiac, and 
hundreds of English traders and scattered settlers of the fron- 
tier, even east of the mountains, were butchered. Terror and 
confusion reigned along the whole border; for even the Creeks 
of Georgia laid aside the " Peace Pipe " and entered on the 
work of slaughter. 

Consternation prevailed in the councils of the colonies, 
especially from Pennsylvania southward. If the rising under 
Pontiac should be successful, a cordon of fire would be drawn 
around the settlements, from the St. Lawrence to Georgia, for 
not an Indian heart beat on the continent that was not, at 
bottom, liostile to the English and alarmed at the display of 
strength which had expelled the French, whom the most of 
them loved so well. Two expeditions were prepared. One, 
under Col. Bradstreet, passed by way of Oswego and Niagara 
to Detroit; the other, under Col. Bouquet, pressed through 
from Eastern Pennsylvania to Fort Pitt and penetrated to 
the heart of the Indian country in Ohio. 

But before the spring had fairly opened it became apparent 
to Pontiac that the task he had undertaken was beyond his 
power. The Indians were too scattered and possessed too 
few resources of support to act together in large numbers, for 
any considerable length of time. They had been able to 
maintain the siege of Detroit by the supplies pressed from 
the French inhabitants settled about it, and the wide range of 
forest, lake and river in its vicinity. But that was an 
exceptional case, they had failed there, trade was stopped, 
and tliey had long been accustomed to rely on the whites 
for arms, powder and ball for their own hunts and wars. 
They were, to crown all, incapable of a compact continu- 
ous union, even under a Pontiac. They were discouraged 
by the failure to get possession at once of the critical points, 
Detroit and Fort Pitt. The first heat of hope and passion 



THE FAILURE OF PONTIAC's HOPES. 199 

was past ; they cohIcI not now spare the whites, nor con- 
quer them. Pontiac coukl no longer inspire them witli the 
lire and fervor of the last year. They were ready on the tirst 
favorable occasion to treat for peace — with rage and despair, 
indeed, but they must have supplies ; they must welcome the 
English traders ; they must make a present submission or 
they would be crushed by the powerful armies of the whites 
and the miserable remnants of theia- tribes would be driven 
from their lands. Therefore no resistance was offered tc) the 
expeditions of this year (1764). Treaties were made by the 
two commanders and by Sir William Johnson with the 
more northern and eastern tribes, the captives were given up, 
military posts re-established, and trade revived. 

Pontiac's only hope was now in the tribes of the West and 
in the French, who still held possession of the west bank of 
the Mississippi. During the next year, 1765, he exerted all 
his influence to get aid from them and to combine the prairie 
tribes, but in vain. The French were just turning over their 
forts and settlements to the Spaniards. Finding his cause 
hopeless the great chieftain accepted the inevitable fate of his 
race, went in person, in 17G6, to Oswego, where envoys of all 
the tribes met Sir William Johnson, and concluded a treaty 
of peace. In 1769 he was murdered at Cahokia by an Illi- 
nois Indian, who, it is said, was hired to do the foul deed by 
an English trader. The whole nation of the Illinois was held 
responsible for it by the other Western tribes and were, soon 
after, almost exterminated by them, only a miserable remnant 
being left. 



CHAPTER YL 

THE INDIANS MAKE WAR ON THE AMERICAN PIONEERS. 

The southern Valley was divided with considerable definite- 
ness between the tribes resident there. The Chickasaws and 
Choctaws held the east bank of the River, the Creeks, or 
Muskogees, southern Georgia and Alabama, and the Clierokees 
the upper Tennessee and the mountainous region southeast of 
it. If changes had taken place in modern days it had been an 
unknown length of time before. They had a recognized 
title to their lands. Kentucky, " the dark and bloody 
ground," in the thought of the Indian, was a Debatable 
Land, a common hunting ground, to which all loved to lay 
claim, and in which none had the hardihood to take up 
their residence and build their towns. They would have been 
the common prey of the warlike tribes north and south 
and could not hope to escape speedy annihilation. The 
Iroquois confederacy claimed a title to it because their war 
parties had sometimes safely crossed it in stealthy expedi- 
tions against the southern tribes and returned victorious to 
chant their own prowess at Onondaga Castle. 

The Clierokees claimed it, for they had often beaten their 
enemies under its pleasant woods, or marched to the Ohio 
and surprised them at the " Licks," or salt springs. With 
equal right could the tribes north of the Ohio claim it, for 
none more often hunted in it or more frequently achieved the 
joy of the Indian's heart — a stealthy swoop across the river on a 
party of their foes and a rapid retreat to the safety of their 
own towns far in the interior, triumphantly displaying gory 
scalp locks on their spears, or at their belts. But these north- 
ern tribes had only the claim of present occupation to the 
lands where they built their towns. The Shawnees had 

300 



TITLES TO THE NOKTHEASTEEN VALI.EV. 201 

withdrawn there from the south to escape the vengeance of 
the Chickasaws and Cherokees ; the Delawares were fugitives 
from re<rions far to the east: and others were modern comers 
from the west or north, who dwelt in safety because the Iro- 
quois had lately been too busy fighting the French and nego- 
tiatino- with the Encrlish to find time to destroy them or 
drive them away. Even the distant Illinois trembled between 
the tribes of the Dakotah on the west and the Iroquois 
nations in the east. 

The haughty confederacy of central New York assumed to 
own the third part of a continent through the terror of their 
arms and their bloody deeds, and lorded it over many tribes; 
but they never actually occupied the Valley proper. Their 
claim w^as several times secured by treaty, and the English 
Indian agents and colonial authorities bought up various 
rights from occupants or claimants, for comparatively trifling 
sums, given as presents to the chiefs, who were assumed to 
have the power of sale and transfer. The chiefs, however, 
had no more control over tribal lands than any other member 
of their communities, except as they might have more influ- 
ence over their sturdily republican subjects. If the tribe refused 
to ratify the engagements they had made the transaction was 
null and void, according to Indian usage. Thus, treaties and 
purchases of territory were often illusory; not understood by 
the tribes as a final alienation of their lands, or, if consented 
to by these unpractical, grown-up children, the arrangement 
was repudiated when they had changed their minds. In 1768 
Sir AVilliam Johnson, as commissioner for the British Govern- 
ment, bought, for fifty-two thousand dollars and some presents 
to the chiefs, a large territory south of the Ohio River and on 
its branches, in Pennsylvania and New York, from the Iro- 
quois, the Delawares, Shawnees, Mingoes and others who had 
real or pretended claims. This did not prevent Indian out- 
breaks, Indian hunting on the ceded grounds, and constant 
hostility toward the inflowing explorers and settlers. 



202 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The Indians liad very indefinite notions of snch transactions, 
and only respected them so long as the impossibility of doing 
withont traders And the conveniences of civilized life, which 
had replaced their primitive manufactures, was severely felt, 
and the fear of punishment was strong on them. Their bands 
of warriors had always been in the habit of roving at will; 
the individuals of the tribes did not easily conceive a binding 
force in their consent to a sale of lands such that they could 
not still roam over them and surprise any party interfering 
with their hunt, and often they had given no such consent. 
Their chiefs had pretended to bind them, but they recognized 
no such power in the chief. The forms of purchase satisfied 
the sense of justice of the whites, no matter how sharp the 
bargain or how small the. consideration; but the Indian was 
unable to see it in the same light, or to feel the continuous 
and unalterable nature of the agreement. To this he could 
be brought only when he became civilized, drew his support 
from the cultivated products of the earth, and looked from 
the point of view of the thrifty husbandman rather than that 
of the roving hunter. The antagonism of interests and desires 
was almost complete. The French got over it in the readiest 
way by making themselves acceptable to the red man. Anglo- 
American industry, and the vigorous spread of, and require- 
ments of space for, settlements, as well as the less flexible 
character of that people, rendered the same degree of success 
impossible to them when attempted, as it sometimes was. 

A government policy was followed, by both home and colo- 
nial authorities, aiming to restrain imposition and irregulari- 
ties by individuals and companies in their dealings with the 
natives. Private contracts and purchases, whereby lands 
were alienated from the Indians, were forbidden. Titles could 
he valid onl}'- on tracts purchased by government, and settle- 
ments outside these were declared unlawful. Such laws were 
not always regarded, and their violation was a fruitful source 
of Indian war. Before and immediately after the French war, 



ENGLISH AND COLONIAL POLICY IN THE WEST. 20S 

the British Government favored the eager desire of the colo- 
nists to secure lands and commence settlements west of the 
mountains ; but the discontent of the tribes,, as shown in 
Pontiac's war, the commencing troubles between the colonies 
on the Atlantic and the Home Government, and other circum- 
stances connected with the government of Canada, now in 
their liands, induced a change. The authorities of the colo- 
nies were forbidden to grant lands or authorize settlement 
beyond the headwaters of the streams falling into the Atlan- 
tic. Pontiac's principle was to be, in substance, adopted and 
the tribes were to be left in undisturbed possession of the 
eastern Valley. The French policy of conciliation and gen- 
tleness was more fully adopted. 

When war with the colonies actually broke out, the British 
Government, determined to subdue the colonies at any cost, 
souffht the alliance and aid of the tribes north and south, fur- 
nished them with warlike stores and organized their expedi- 
tions against the settlements of the border. Had Pontiac 
been alive he would have seen his desire realized, and it would 
have gone hard with the settlers of Western Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, for the irresistible tide 
had began to flow in spite of the commands of the British 
Government. Pontiac's war had made the people of the 
border still more familiar with the inviting features of the 
agricultural Valley; discontent with the colonial policy of 
England begot many troubles along the coast, and the rough 
mountain regions were not attractive after a glimpse of the 
charming and fruitful territory beyond. 

In 1753 an American settlement of eleven families was 
made on the Youghiogheny, on the Valley side of the water- 
shed of the Alleghanies, while yet the French held possession 
of the great rivers. After the occupation of Pittsburgh set- 
tlement began north and south on the more eastern branches 
of the O bio. Pontiac's war mostly extinguished these in blood, 
but, a general pacification having quelled Indian animosity 



204 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEV. 

for the time, they were re-occupied by the courageous froutiers- 
men, and the oncoming tide of a most fruitful civilization was 
announced by the gradual filtering through the mountains, 
from above Pittsburgh to the upper Tennessee, of some hun- 
dreds of families. Among these there could not fail to be 
some both rash and abandoned characters, whose careless or 
criminal violence would furnish the spark required to cause 
the smoulderinof wrath of tlie Indian to burst into flame. A 
misdeed of the Indians below Pittsburgh was retaliated by a 
party of whites with blind fury, and among the innocent vic- 
tims was the entire family of Logan, a Mingo chief, friendly 
to the whites. A violent war broke out at once. An army 
sent by the Governor of Yirginia, Lord Dunmore, to subdue 
the Indians fought a l)attle with them at the mouth of the 
Great Kenhawa, October 10, ITT-i. The Indians fought with 
obstinate resolution, and the battle lasted the whole day — 
seventy-five whites being killed and one hundred and forty 
wounded. Loii^an fullv o^lutted his vens^eance for the slauo^h- 
ter of his family. The Indians were at length beaten and 
retreated over the Ohio. 

The wise and eloquent Logan sued for peace for his people 
in a memorable speech, preserved by Jefferson, which gives 
line ex])ression to one side of the Indian character. But far 
more trying than bloody battles to the settlers were the sud- 
den attacks of small bands of enraged Indians on explorers 
and families, in which women and children were pitilessly 
slaughtered. Nothing would appear better calculated to 
intimidate and restrain the wave of settlement, and yet it 
seemed to arouse hardihood and courage instead of awaken- 
ing fear. Although a formal peace was made many times, 
the conflict was really continuous from 177-1 to 1795; and yet, 
during this period, the numbers of the settlers were increased 
by more than 150,000 in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and the 
parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia adjacent. The possibility 
of having to endure the most dreadful forms of sufterino- and 



t> 



THE RESOLUTE COUKAGE OF EARLY SETTLERS. 20.J 

death seemed to have no power to terrify these courageous 
men and intrepid women. No signs of quailing or retreating 
were shown. They floated down the river in flat boats with 
wives, children and all the property they possessed, liable at 
every turn to be ambushed and flred on from the shore. Indi- 
viduals wandered, often alone, tli rough the forests, hunting, 
exploring, or passing from settlement to settlement. They 
gathered — a few families at most — within a stockade fort lia- 
ble to be at any moment attacked. More courage and resolu- 
tion could not well be displayed. 

The contest was very obstinate and very bloody during the 
Revolutionary War. The British, from the posts at Detroit, 
near Lake Erie and in the " Illinois Country," distributed 
the " sinews of war" to the tribes. British agents stirred up 
their animosity, organized, and sometimes led, expeditions^ 
asrainst the feeble settlements south of tlie river; and in the 
south stimulated the Creeks and Cherokees to slaugliter. 
The Indians were only too ready. In 1776, the settlers of 
Tennessee fought two desperate but successful battles with 
the Cherokees which kept them quiet for a time. The Ohio 
tribes hovered around the settlements in Kentucky until they 
could safely strike a quick, sure blow, or capture a straggler, 
then swiftly fled across the river. Sometimes they laid siege 
to the block-houses and forts; sometimes bloody battles were 
fought. The Indians found a people '' worthy of their steel " 
and even more resolute, fearless and capable than themselves. 
But hundreds were cut oft", many promising homes were laid 
waste, the women and children barbarously murdered. The 
wild hunter fought well for his race and his hunting grounds 
against the intrudino- civilization he abhorred 

But he did not always rind himself safe on the north side 
of the river though liis towns were some days' journey in the 
interior. Frequent expeditions of the settlers penetrated to 
them and inflicted severe retaliation. Nor were the posts 
of the British, though distant hundreds of miles from the 



206 tup: mississum'I valley. 

settlements, secure from attack. After considerable persist- 
ence, Gen. (then Col.) George llogers Clarke, a truly repre- 
sentative pioneer of Kentucky, obtained authority from Pat- 
rick Henry, Governor of Virginia, to organize an expedition 
against the British posts in " the Illinois." lie collected a 
small troop at Pittsburgh and gathered the rest from the 
new and constantly threatened settlements in Kentucky. 
Notwithstanding the serious danger to their homes, they 
answered the call. Clarke made a forced march through the 
forests, captured all the posts by surprise or artifice, deprived 
the British of their prestige and stores for the Indians, and 
secured the rear of the settlements in that direction. Thus 
no small share of work was done by these pioneers in aiding 
to secure American Independence. 

But the Ohio and Indiana tribes were determined to hold 
their lands, and still maintained the contest with great perti- 
nacity. AYlien the war closed, the British still remained many 
years at Detroit and gave them more or less encouragement. 
The settlers sutiered some bloody defeats, and the more they 
increased the more determined became the Indian attack. 
From 1782 to 1789 it was computed that 2,000 horses were 
stolen by the Indians, 1,500 persons killed or captured and 
$60,000 worth of ])roperty destroyed. 

Their attempt to uproot the settlements south of the 
Ohio had proved vain, but they were the more resolute 
to hold the country on the north. Until 1788 Ohio was 
not opened to settlement; and the impossibility of obtain- 
ing titles to lands, the hostility of the Indians and the 
proclamation of the G<jvernment forbidding settlers to 
enter, (which was sternly enforced by the Indians), until 
treaties and surveys were completed, confined the whites 
to the regions south of the river. During that year many 
thousands entered the region which had been so populous 
during the time of the Mound Builders. But this occupation 
was based chiefly on the assumption that the treaty of p^. "e 



THE CLOSE OF THE OLD INDIAN WARS. 207 

with England had conveyed a permanent right over the soil 
to the Government of the United States. The Indians re- 
fused to recognize any such right, and demanded that the 
whole country north of the Ohio should be vacated and left 
to them. Riglits resting on conquest have ever been consid- 
ered among nations as valid. The Indians had joined England 
in the war and both had been successfully resisted; therefore 
tlieir territory was held to belong to the conqueror. To make 
treaties that should quiet the Indians and maintain this point 
was the effort of the new Government. This effort failed, 
although various treaties were made with one or more tribes. 
They were constantly disregarded, after a little time, and 
more or less desultory war carried on against the settlements 
north and south of the river. 

Finding that negotiation made no real headway, although 
a formidable outbreak was delayed by the tribes, General 
Ilarmar was sent ao-ainst the Mianiis in 1790. Althouo-h 
he laid waste their lields and burned some of tlieir towns, 
his battles were not entirely successful and he retired, leaving 
a sense of victory in the minds of the Indians. In the follow- 
ing year, General St. Clair led an army of 1,400 men against 
them and met a defeat as decisive as Braddock's, thirty-six 
years before. More than 800 were slain and the rest fled in 
dismay from the field. 

Preparations were commenced at once to send an adequate 
force to retrieve these disasters and protect the settlements, 
•while persevering efforts to effect a treaty with the combined 
tribes without further bloodshed were undertaken. The 
Indians would not listen, insisted on the evacuation of their 
lands, continued to attack outlying and ^'ulnerable points and 
labored to form a strong confederation like that under Pontiac. 
General Anthony Wayne occupied the years 1702 and 1793 in 
organizing and training an army equal to the emergency, and, 
August 20, 1794. fought a decisive battle with them on the 
Maumee Iviver. This virtually put an end to the war and 



208 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

secured a solid peace, which was signed August 3, 1795, by 
all the western tribes. The Wild Hunter had failed in his 
defense; in the trial of strength he had proved the weaker; 
and the English who had encouraged him failed to succor him 
in the hour of need. He now comprehended his destiny and 
bowed before it. Goods were distributed among the tribes 
to the value of $20,000, and about $10,000 worth were to be 
delivered to them annually thereafter. The State of Ohio was 
mostly ceded, absolutely, to the whites, and the territory west 
to the Mississippi and north to the upper lakes secured to 
the Indians, with the reserve of various locations for forts. 

The white man permitted the Indian to roam over his own 
hunting grounds in bitterness of heart, anticipating the speedy 
approach of the time when he must " move on," because they 
would be wanted by the civilized race. In his feeling it was 
a bitter lot, but humanity has been immensely enriched by 
his dispossession. By this time the Cherokees were so out- 
numbered by dense settlements immediately on their borders 
that they renounced a hopeless contest. The Ohio tribes had 
frequently the satisfaction of defeating their foes, and acquired 
a vast amount of property for those times; but the Cherokees 
had been constantly defeated since 1758, when they destroyed 
Fort Loudon, and there was no encouragement to continue 
hostilities. 

Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio became states in the Union, 
Indiana became a territory, and, after a time, Illinois. The 
Indians looked on with silent rage. It was past help and 
hope unless they had other forces than their own. They had 
valiantly contested every foot of ground in the West; but 
the more they slaughtered, captured and tortured at the stake, 
the more rapidly did this flood of civilization which they 
hated rise and threaten to overwhelm them. " Like the grass 
of the prairie, like the leaves of the forest," said they to the 
whites in their picturesque language, " you spring up every- 
where." The vigor of the new stock crowded out the native 
plant. 



CHAPTER VII. 



TECUMSEH AND HIS ALLIES. 



The Indian had reason to wonder, for in the year 1795 — 
the year in Avhicli tliey were obliged to consent to the aliena- 
tion of all the lands the whites wanted nortli of the Ohio^ 
twenty thonsand emigrants passed down the river to seek 
permanent homes on what the tribes considered their own 
lands; and by the close of the century many more people had 
emigrated to the Valley than there were individuals in all 
the wild tribes of Nortli America. Simple astonishment and 
a sense of helplessness kept them quiet; a peace of fifteen 
years permitted the more accessible parts of the southern and 
eastern Valley to fill up with a population almost as large as 
all the colonies contained when they declared their independ- 
ence, and this population had laid broad, deep and most satis- 
factory foundations for a great future. 

New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Nortli Carolina 
came, so to speak, bodily to the West. They formed, here 
and there, large communities and considerable towns, for the 
time fairly homogeneous, and bearing all the characteristics 
of the people of the states from which they had emigrated. 
They soon commenced a new development, but, for the pres- 
ent, it was simply the East set down in the West, with all its 
institutions, its thrift and the intelligence and ambition which 
the shock of the War of Independence had awakened in a 
race rich in undeveloped capacities. This fifteen years was 
the utter doom of the red man's future as a hunter in the 
Valley, but he was unable to see its full import. So large an 
idea there w^as no room in his mind to receive. 

Tecumseh was born to rule his people, and, like Philip of 
Mount Hope and Pontiac, he had the breadth, the power and 
14 209 



210 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the enthusiasm of a genius. But no genius can afford to 
dispense with a broad and true education, which gives clear- 
ness and exactness to thought and distinguishes between the 
visions of the imagination and the severe realities of life. 
Tecumseh had been often in communication with the whites 
in his early life; but he was a genuine Indian. Civilized life 
did not attract him; there was nothing he found desirable in 
the prosperous comfort of the settlements, for it was to be 
obtained only as the reward of a labor and drudgery that 
w^ere abhorrent to the soul of the free Child of the Woods. 
He was ambitious and found no opening fur his aspirations 
among the whites. He fancied that the weakness of the 
Indian was caused by his accepting the aids of civilization ; 
that if he returned to primitive habits, excluded the white 
trader and his demoralizing wares, primitive virtues would 
return, and that his race would be able to resist the progress 
of the whites. 

Associating his brother, the Prophet, who was a famous 
Indian " Medicine," with himself, he appealed to the super- 
stitions of his race, urged, by eloquent speeches and example, 
a return to ancient simplicity and self-dependence and labored, 
like King Philip and Pontiac, to unite all the tribes, north and 
south, in a general confederacy against the settlers. He 
resolved that no more lands should be sold to the whites, and 
secretly visited the tribes, using all his own eloquence and 
the arts of his brother to organize a strong confederacy in the 
upper Valley, from 1806 to 1811. Great Britain had not yet 
lost all hope of recovering her former colonies, and'still courted 
the good will of the Indian tribes around the Great Lakes, as 
well as of the French inhabitants of Canada. Tecumseh was 
in communication with them and was aware of the approach- 
ing war, and he prepared to strike a terrible blow when it 
should break out. 

He was of the Shawnee tribe, who have been called the 
Arabs of the Wilderness. They were originally from the 



THE PLANS OF TECUMSEII, NCHmi AND SOUTH. 211 

South, from which tliey had been driven by the combined 
enmity of the Chickasaws and the Cherokees. Tecumseh 
visited tlie southern tribes, just before the outbreak of tlie 
Avar, and urged liis views with all the force and fire of Indian 
oratory. The Chickasaws declined to enter into his plans, 
but the Creeks lent a more willing ear. The renown of the 
Shawnees, who were among the most warlike tribes in the 
Valley, and had been prominent in all the old wars against 
the whites, was known to them. With some difticulty he 
persuaded the Creeks to unite with him. For nearly eighty 
years they had been in relations, for the most part of friendly 
trade, with the English, and some of their chiefs resisted the 
proposal and refused to take part in it. Tecumseh assured 
them that when he returned IsVjrth he would " stamp his foot 
and the whole continent would tremble." He visited all tlie 
tribes as far as Florida and prepared such a vengeance against 
the whites in the South as had, nearly three hundred years 
before, come so near being the utter destruction of De Soto 
at Maubila. 

Tecumseh felt England behind him and knew that the war 
between Great Britain and the xVmerican Republic was about 
to be declared. When that conflict should commence he 
would '' stamp his foot " metaphorically, and his southern 
allies would attribute the outbreak to his mystical power. 
He had already confronted Gen. Wm. H. Harrison, Governor 
of Indiana Territory, in a council held August, 1810, and 
refused assent to a treaty, on which the Governor insisted, 
for the sale of more land required for settlement, and believed 
himself strong enough to defy the powder of the whites. He 
was, however, sufficiently politic to defer the commencement 
of open war until all should be ready to strike a decisive blow 
that should " shake the continent." His brother was not as 
prudent, and precipitated the war before his return from the 
South, and before a sufficiently large force had been collected 
to make sure of victory. Governor Plarrison, comprehending 



212 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the danger, had obtained some government troops and called 
out the militia of the territory in order to strike a decisive 
blow in season. To the great indignation of Tecumseh, his 
brother attacked this force instead of temporizing and wait- 
ing till success could reasonably be expected. 

This was the battle of Tip])ecanoe, and was fought Novem- 
ber 7, 1811, seven months before the declaration of war against 
England by the United States Government. The Prophet was 
beaten, his forces scattered, liis own prestige, and that of 
Tecumseh, with the confederacy they had been at so much 
pains to organize, were lost. The grand blow that was to liave 
been so fatal was turned aside and resolved into an ordinary 
series of attacks on weak outposts, scattered settlers and 
small bands of whites. Tecumseh, still hoping to retrieve 
the mistake through the success of the British forces when 
the war should begin, retired to Canada, collected his Indian 
allies in that region, and waited. 

War was declared June 19, 1812, and hostilities soon com- 
menced in the neighborhood of Detroit. July 17, a British 
and Indian force captured Mackinaw; General Hull, after com- 
mencing an invasion of Upper Canada, retreated, without good 
reason, to Detroit; and a party lie sent out to meet reinforce- 
ments was ambushed by Tecumseh and cut to pieces. Tecum- 
seh joined the British commander in a demonstration against 
Detroit, which so intimidated General Hull that he surren- 
dered that place and all the forces under his command, with- 
out resistance, August 16, 1812. The Indians further west 
watched their chances, one of which occurred at Chicago 
August 15. The garrison had been ordered by General Hull 
to evacuate Fort Dearborn, located at the mouth of Chicago 
Biver. After having marched out they Avere attacked by the 
Indians. The party attacked contained about eighty soldiers, 
a trader with his employes, and a number of women and 
children. Between fifty and sixty, including two women and 
twelve cliildren, were massacred, and the remainder made 



THE DEATH OF TECUMSEH. 213 

prisoners. But no really iin])urtant successes in the West 
enabled the Indian tril)es of Indiana and Illinois to over- 
come the de|)ressing- effect of the 1 tattle of Tij)j>ecanoe. A 
vigorons patrol was kept up on the fi'ontier l)y the settlers. 
Many lives were lost but no large Indian force was gathered, 
and the whites gradually drove the hostile tribes north and 
west beyond the boundaries of settlement. 

But Tecumseh had staked all on the success of the British. 
"With two thousand or more warriors he gave them all the 
assistance possible, and in many reverses which befell the 
American forces horrible massacres were perpetrated by the 
tribes he commanded. January 22, 1813, at Frenchtown, on 
the River Raisin, an American force nnmberinir 800 was 
defeated, and, after the surrender to the British, all the survi- 
vors but thirty-three were massacred by the Indians. Another 
disaster at Fort Meigs, May 5 following, resulted in the death 
or captivity of G50 Americans. But the day of hope for 
Tecumseh was drawing to a close. September 10, 1813, Com- 
modore Perry obtained command of Lake Erie by a decisive 
naval victory over the British. This was followed by the 
invasion of Upper Canada by General Harrison and the battle 
of the Thames, October 5, in which a comj^lete victory was 
gained over the united British and Indians, and Tecumseh 
was killed. He had been exceedingly formidable by liis reso- 
lute valor and the barbarity of his Indian allies. In his fall 
all danger of Indian confederations in the upper Yalley ])assed 
away. In him the hope of the prairie and lake tribes became 
extinct, and the danger to the settlements was over. 

In 1812 another event, which became the signal and the 
instrument of a new and greater era of progress in the devel- 
opment of the Yalley, occurred — the first steamboat on west- 
ern waters awakened the echoes of the woods from Pittsburgh 
to New Orleans. The Age of Steam had begun. 

In the South the war cry of Tecumseh, in 1812, found no 
echo among the Choctaws, the Chickasaws or the Cherokees. 



214 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

A portion of the Creeks also refused to listen; bnt some 
thousands of them seized the tomahawk and sprung upon the 
war path in answer, and proved themselves the bravest and 
most uncompromising of their race. 

For a hundred years they had been multiplying their rela- 
tions with the French and Spanish, on the South and West, 
and the English on the East; and, since the close of the Rev- 
olutionary War in 1783, emigration had pressed on them from 
all sides. They had come into closer contact with civilization 
than the tribes of the North. Some of their most eminent 
chiefs were educated half-breeds; trade was l)riskly driven ])y 
multitudes of intelligent men, as well as adventurers, and 
the capacity of the Indian to become considerably civilized, 
in time, and under favorable conditions, Ijecame evident. 
There were two parties among them. One clung to the 
whites; the other sighed for the wild freedom of ancient days 
and longed for the excitement of war. These had kept up 
occasional hostilities with the intruding settlers from the 
first, and tried to resist the progress of civilization among 
their people. This party sprung to arms at the call of 
Tecumseh; the other joined the whites, who were also sup- 
ported, more or less, by bands of Choctaws, Chickasaws and 
Cherokees. 

In the heart of their country, about a hundred miles north 
of Mobile, were considerable settlements. Here fell the most 
fearful blows. The war spirit had reached its height; many- 
isolated murders had occurred, and the inhabitants collected 
into forts. 

In a battle fought between the wliites and Indians on 
the 27th July, 1813, at Burnt Corn, the whites were defeated. 
The country was insufficiently provided with means of de- 
fense. Over 550 persons were collected in Fort Minis, a few 
miles from the ancient Maubila, wdiere the Indians of that 
time fought so terrible a battle with De Soto, nearly three 
hundred years before. On the 3Uth of August this jDlace 



THE HEROIC BRAVERY OF THE CREEKS. 215 

was attacked by one thousand Creek warriors. The garrison 
was unprepared and one of the gates was open. 

Tlie Indians rushed in before it could be closed and the 
fearful work of slaughter began. It continued for five hours, 
for the doomed settlers fought with the bravery of desjjair. 
Fourteen persons escaped, a few negroes and half-breeds wei'e 
kept as slaves. All the rest perished. The slaughter and 
cruelties of De Soto were avenged on a nobler race, on women 
and children. 

The whole surrounding country was roused. From Geor- 
gia, from Mobile, from the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and 
from Tennessee the cruel Creeks were assailed. Gen. Jackson, 
aftei-ward the hero of ]S^e^v Orleans, hastened with a large 
force from Nashville, and sent Gen. Coffee to attack Tallase- 
hatchie, where a party of the Creek warriors had assembled. 
More than 200 were slain, not one asking or accepting quarter. 
They fought till the last was killed. This was November 3, 
1813. On the 9th November they were again defeated with 
great slaughter at Talladega; Gen. Cocke defeated them No- 
vember IS; and Gen. Floyd, commanding an expedition from 
Georgia, routed them, inflicting on them a loss of 200 war- 
riors, November 29. Gen. Claiborne inflicted another defeat 
on them, at Holy Ground, December 23. 

Notwithstanding all these reverses there was no sign of 
quailing among these fierce and heroic warriors. General 
Jackson desired to spare a race so In-ave ; but they preferred 
death to surrender as long as they could keep the field. Twice 
they attacked Jackson's force and were beaten ofi' with difii- 
culty — January 21 and 24, IS 1-1. The Indians considered 
these to be victories, since, the battles over, the army retired 
to its intrenchments. It was too weak to pursue so valiant 
and determined a foe. It has been affirmed that, in these last 
two battles, the Indians were inferior to Jackson's army by 
several hundreds. 

January 27, 181-1, they attacked General Floyd, with his 



210 thp: MISSISSIPPI vallev. 

Georgia troops, amounting to more than 1,600 men. Al- 
tliongh beaten off, they had inflicted so much loss that Gen. 
Floyd judged it wisest to retire. March 27, Gen. Jackson 
attacked a chosen hand of 1,000 warriors, who had fortified a 
peninsula on the Tallapoosa River, called the Horse Shoe, 
from its form. His force was double that of the Indians and 
furnished with cannon and cavalry. The Creeks defended 
themselves with a l)ravery never excelled, answered all offers 
of peace with l)ullets, and nearly all perished. 

But a remnant was now left. Part of these made their 
submission from time to time, and a part fled to the Semi- 
noles, within the jurisdiction of Spain, to renew the same 
desperate conflict many years later. August 10, Gen. Jackson 
concluded a treaty of peace with the Creeks, and the impor- 
tant Indian Wars of the Valley east of the Mississippi 
River were over. The wild hunter of the South — equally 
with the tribes of the Xorth — had failed in his defense. He 
yielded only when he could do no more. Some of the irre- 
concilable Creeks fled to the swamps of Florida and joined 
the Seminoles. These, thus recruited, and strengthened by 
escaped negro slaves in later years, made a resolute stand and 
shed much blood before they could be vanquished in their 
almost inaccessible retreats. This was done at great cost, 
and all the tribes east of the river were finally removed to 
reservations west of that stream — mostly to the Indian Ter- 
ritory west of Arkansas. The red hunter had made a vain 
but gallant fight for the possession of the Great Yalley. 

The overflowing resources of the Valley may be made to 
support in abundant comfort perhaps two hundred millions 
of human beings. The Indian tribes who occupied it proba- 
bly never numbered one hundred thousand souls east of the 
Mississippi; they made the least possible use of its capabili- 
ties, often suffering from want in the midst of the plenty it 
offered; and instead of using its resources, they found their 
chief business and delight in war — capturing, slaying and 



THE INDIAN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES. iM T 

torturing' each other. It is iuipossil)le to see any philanthr()])y 
in scrupuh)usly leaving them to neglect and waste these 
immense sources of welfare to man because they were in tem- 
porary possession. If we admit that it was right to oblige 
them to permit others to develop the wealth they neglected, 
the Indian policy of the United States Government may be 
called worthy of a just and enlightened people. It may even 
be called chivalrous and considerate almost beyond example, 
and, in some points, unwisely so. 

The French of the seventeenth century ti-eated the tribes 
as allies because they had need of them. AVhen the English 
Government acquired possession of the regions occupied, or 
claimed, by the French, it continued this practice for the 
same reason. The Republic did not require Indian allies, yet 
it continued to treat them as independent nationalities, over 
whom it assumed no rights of control but what treaties gave 
it. The actual character of the situation was not, however, 
in keeping with this nominal relationship. Equality is 
assumed by this policy, or, at least, the power on each side of 
fulfilling treaty stipulations. Could definite bounds to the 
progress of settlement have been maintained, or could the 
Indians have accepted civilization, have withdrawn themselves 
to a reasonable area, or have settled on so much land as they 
could cultivate, like the rest of the agricultural population, 
no difficulty would have presented itself. 

This, for the tribes, was impossible from the rigid nature of 
the Indian and his immemorial habits ; and it was equally 
impossible to allow them sufficient territory to support them 
as hunters in the best parts of the Yalley. The assumed 
relation, therefore, was not the real one. The Indians were 
the wards of the nation. They resisted the demand for their 
lands, but they must be had nevertheless ; and treaties, for 
the most part, have been merely the expression of Indian 
assent, most unwillingly given, to a demand which they were 
unable to resist. This demand was unavoidably made — 



218 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

but with such mitigating circumstances as tlie case admitted. 
Goods and money were freely given to procure assent by 
temporary gratification, and the future support of the tribes 
was assumed, so far as they required aid, as a just return for 
the enforced abandonment of their lands. 

It has been computed that the Government of the United 
States has paid, or engaged to pay, to the tribes of the whole 
country about two hundred millions of dollars for their lands. 
Much of this is invested and the interest paid them annually 
for their support. 

They are treated as far as possible as independent communi- 
ties. They govern themselves with entire freedom within the 
limits assigned them, and no force is applied to oblige them to 
change their traditional habits if they keep tlie peace and carry 
out the provisions of the treaties. This is both chivalrous and 
kind; but it has many unfortunate results. For the most 
part they have few of the qualities necessary to preserve them 
from degradation when deprived of the excitements and stim- 
ulus to self-preservation of their ancient life. Their few rude 
and barbarous virtues mostly disappear when in contact with, 
or dependent on, the whites. They readily receive some of 
the worst vices of civilization while its virtues are unattrac- 
tive and incom])rehensible to them. In this state of inde- 
pendent dependence, so to speak, they are removed from 
elevating influences while subjected to many that are demor- 
alizing. It is quite impossible to keep abandoned whites 
wholly away from them; it is practically impossible to con- 
trol government agencies among them so completely that its 
intentions shall be always fully carried out, and still more 
impossible to prevent the intrusion and occasional violent 
deeds of unscrupulous men on the borders of civilized society 
— or outside of them — that exasperate the tribes and excite 
them to fearful retaliation on the innocent. Above all, 
the independent condition leaves them under the control of 
their naturally fierce and bloody passions. The slavery to 



THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE INDIAN QUESTION. 219 

which tlie Spaniards snl)jected tlie Mexicans and Peruvians 
was, in some aspects, preferable to this liberty to remain in 
primitive barbarism— after having lost primitive virtues — and 
to add to it civilized vices. 

The Indian Policy of France and Great Britain, in Canada^ 
was different and seems, in some respects, more snccessful. 
They have been left there with less liberty, and more strin- 
o-ent regulations ao-ainst evil white influence have been com- 
billed with more effort to overcome their distaste for civilized 
habits; but the numbers there have been few compared with 
tliose in the United States, and, for the most part, from vari- 
ous causes, they have been less fierce and intractable. The 
difficulties in the way of a satisfactory solution of the Indian 
Question have proved really insurmountable. The liberty 
allowed them has constantly been abused, and an Indian war 
has been of almost annual occurrence since settlement began 
to pass the Missouri Piver. Tlie army required to subdue 
and police them has cost uncounted millions, and many thou- 
sand lives have been lost. Tlie settlers subject to their attacks 
have very naturally been greatly exasperated at their bloody 
brutality and would wish them mercilessly exterminated, while 
those who consider the wrongs almost inevitably done them 
criticise the Indian Policy from the opposite point of view. 

It is not easy to see how so intractable a race of several hun- 
dred thousand could have been more generously treated under 
all the circumstances, nor how the Indian Policy could have 
been so altered as to obviate the difficulties of the situation with- 
ont doing extreme violence to the Indian nature. The means 
that were at hand to influence them have been employed; all 
possible liberty has been allowed them, and when their feroc- 
ity has broken forth in war they have been chastised only so 
far as was necessary to restore peace and induce tliem to keep 
it. The character of the race must have made any policy a 
failure which sought their well-being as civilized communities- 
would understand it. 



'220 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The tilling up of the Pacific Slope, the vast Rocky Moun- 
tain region and the Western Plains with a civilized popula- 
tion, must make a change in this policy inevitable at no distant 
•day. The idea of a real independence can not be maintained 
when liberty to remain sa^'ages would mean phicing adjacent 
settlements at the mercy of their bloody barbarism. To con- 
strain them to retire to reservations, to lead a quiet and peace- 
able life, and to learn the arts of civilization will be essential 
to the safety of the growing population of the Great West. 
This change will naturally be as quiet and gradual as possible; 
but, ultimately, their destiny is to accept civilization or to be 
punished into annihilation. This, the safety and welfare of far 
larger numbers and much more important interests than their 
own will absolutely demand. 

Between 1830 and 1850 the southern tribes, and a part of 
the northern, were partly persuaded and partly forced to 
exchange their lands east of the Mississippi for a remarkably 
fine region — the Indian Territory — beyond the then borders 
■of civilization. Their removal was accomplished at the cost 
•of the United States, and annual funds for their support pro- 
vided. The southern tribes had been so long and closely con- 
nected with the whites that they were able to adopt many of 
the habits of an agricultural population. The result has not, 
apparently, l)een a failure, and it indicates the probable future 
of the race. While a vast territory remained unoccupied they 
were interfered with very little; but the plains are already 
largely settled, and a civilized population is crowding into 
the fertile valleys and basins and opening mines in the various 
ranges of the Rocky Mountain plateau. As in the Valley 
formerly, the tribes of this region now resist encroachment 
by repeated bloody outbreaks. It is not believed that the 
whole number of Indians within the present area of the 
United States is less than the same area contained three hun- 
dred years ago. There will soon be no more room for the 
Wild Hunter, and stern necessity will require that he forget 



THE ULTIMATE FATE OF THE INDIANS. 221 

his distaste for labor and adopt the liabits of tlie farmer. The 
inevitable fate of the tribes of the Dakota race and the Pacific 
Slope is to imitate the Cherokees, Choctaws and Creeks of the 
Indian Territory, and their descendants will ultimately become 
citizens of the Republic. On the whole, the Indian Policy 
of the country may be designated as just, forbearing and con- 
siderate. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE HEROIC PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT. 

By the time that the sparks of Pontiac's "War were com- 
pletely extinguished a fair acquaintance with the upper part 
of the Ohio valley had been gained by various English, or 
Anglo-American explorers. Dr. Thomas Walker had pene- 
trated to the heart of Kentucky in 1747 and again in 1758. 
The contest with the French and then the Indians, the nego- 
tiations of British and colonial agents, and the wanderings 
of English traders south of Lake Erie, had made Ohio and 
"Western Pennsylvania tamiliar ground. In 1766, a party 
headed by Capt. James Smith visited the lower valleys of the 
Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, tracing them to the Ohio. 
In the same year Findlay, Ilarrod and others wandered over 
other parts of Kentucky. 

In June, 1769, Daniel Boone and others penetrated to 
Kentucky. There was danger from tlie Indians and some of 
the party were killed, but Boone remained hunting and study- 
ing Kentuck}' three years ; much of the time alone. A 
skillful hunter, more than a match for the Indians in their 
own crafty ways, and delighted with this beautiful region — it 
was not a " dark and bloody ground " to him, but a Land of 
Promise. 

On the 9th of March, 1769, a petition of the " Mississippi 
Company," signed by George Washington among others, 
was presented to the English Board of Trade asking for 
two and a half million acres of land in Ohio. It was not 
granted until Franklin's paper on "The Ohio Settlement" 
had interested the Government in the scheme. The king 
signed the grant, August 1-1, 1772. In 1769, Tennessee 
received its lirst permanent settlers. Previously to this, 

323 



EARLY SETTLEMENTS FROM PITTSBURGH TO MOBILE. 223 

(from 1750 to 17(30) settlers liad crossed the boundaries of the 
Valley in southwest Yirgiuia and western North Carolina. 
This was an extension of those settlements. At the same 
time settlers located on the Ilolston Itiver. 

176-1 to 1709. — French and Spanish settlements already 
existed on the shores of the Gulf, in Alabama, and near the 
Great River in Mississippi. This region passed into the 
liands of the British Government in 17(!i, being called West 
Florida. A large part of the French inhabitants retired 
across the Mississippi. The English encouraged emigration 
there, and settlers from North Carolina, Yirginia and Georgia 
located in the present State of Mississippi between these 
dates. French settlements had long before begun to creep 
up the Alabama River from Mobile, the residence of a 
garrison. 

1770. — A settlement was formed at Wheeliiiir, in this 
year. 

Emigrants from New Jersey settled in Mississippi, followed 
soon after by others from England, Scotland, Ireland and the 
West Indies. Negro slavery was introduced from the first, 
by the French and British. 

1771. — Pensacola, in this year, contained eighty houses and 
was the residence of the English Governor. The unhealthy 
climate along the Gulf coast rendered the increase of popula- 
tion slow on that side, while the fierceness of the Creeks 
retarded settlements on the higher lands of the interior; yet 
traders and travelers were constantly crossing their country in 
all directions. 

1772. — Settlements in East Tennessee extendea north and 
south from the Wautauga. We learn from Washinofton's 
diary of a journey made to Pittsburgh and the Kenhawa 
River below, where he had lands, that families were then 
(1770) crossing the mountains in Pennsylvania and Yirginia. 
Farms had now begun to niulti])ly in the neighborhood of 
Pittsburo;h. 



224 ■ THE MISSISSIPPI- VALLEY. 

1773.— Keiitnck}' and Tennessee were swarming with sur- 
veyors and explorers selecting sites foi" settlement. Louisville 
was surveyed and the plat of a town laid out (though no set- 
tlers had yet arrived) for John Campbell and John Conolly^ 
in this year. Four hundred persons are also said to have 
passed down the Ohio and Mississippi to settle in the Natchez 
region. In this year, also, Daniel Boone started with his 
family and cattle from North Carolina to locate in Kentucky. 
Being attacked by the Indians on the way and six men slain 
(there were iive other families, and several men besides, with 
him), he retired to the settlement on Clinch River and waited 
two years before establishing the first family in Kentucky, in 
the meanwhile exploring for other parties. Emigrants from 
Virginia and North Carolina are said to liave passed down the- 
Tennessee to Mississippi — an enterprise of astonishing hardi- 
liood and resolution. 

1774. — Capt. James Harrod with forty others laid out 
Harrodsburg, and built a number of cabins, but did not yet 
bring their families. 

1775. — A crop of corn was raised this year by Simon Ken- 
ton and Thomas Williams, at Maysville, Kentucky. Settle- 
ments were commenced at Boonesborougli by Daniel Boone, 
and at Harrodsburg and block-houses built, and also at three 
other places, all in the heart of Kentucky and widely sepa- 
rated from each other. At the end of this year there were 
five hundred persons in all the settlements of Kentucky, most 
of them beiuir vio-orous men. Two hundred and flftv acres of 
corn v\'ere planted and gathered. 

The " Transylvania Company '' was formed in North Car- 
olina. Richard Henderson was at its head. They made a 
private purchase of a large tract of land in Kentucky and 
another in Tennessee, of the Cherokee Indians, for 10,000- 
pounds sterling, and sought to organize a government. Vir- 
ginia did not recognize the purchase in Kentucky, and the 
attempt to organize a government was limited to a prelimi- 



SETTLEMEMT, WAR, AND HEROISM IN KENTUCKY. 225 

nary eonveiitioii. Virginia claimed tliein as part of her popu- 
lation, in the next year, and organized a county in Kentucky. 

1776. — A few new settlements were made in Kentucky in 
this year, in Franklin and Washington Counties. July 7 
three young ladies, one being a daughter of Boone, were cap- 
tured by the Indians. The girls v/ere amusing themselves in 
a canoe, on the Kentucky Kiver, within sight of Boones- 
borough. They were recaptured, uninjured, the next day. 
A trip was made from Pittsburgh to New Orleans for powder. 
In the next year 136 kegs were successfully br<jught up to the 
former place. George Rogers Clarke settled in Kentucky this 
year. The Cherokee Indians prepared to destroy the Ten- 
nessee settlements. July 20 and 21 two battles were fought 
with them by the settlers, with complete success. 

1777. — The Indian tribes became much exasperated by the 
growing settlements and constantly harassed them, hovering 
about in the woods to surprise individuals, or laying siege to 
tlie forts. This state of tilings continued for twenty years. 

September 26, Fort Henry, near Wheeling, was approached 
by 400 hundred Indians. They were led by Simon Girty, a 
white man, Indian agent of the British Government. The 
defenders numbered but twelve men and boys, the rest having 
been lured into the woods and killed before the besiegers showed 
themselves. The defense continued most of the day, when 
ammunition ran short. A keg of ])owder v/as concealed in a 
house outside of the Fort, sixty yards distant. A young 
woman volunteered to go for it through a storm of bullets 
and returned unhurt. The defense was continued till aid 
arrived, and the savages retreated discomfitted, with a loss of 
one hundred killed. 

Logan's Station was besieged from May to September, 
in tliis year. Powder giving out Logan took two of his 
men, and, escaping through the surrounding forest filled 
with Indians, traveled to the Ilolston settlement, two hun- 
dred miles distant, and back in ten days. At length help 
15 



226 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

arrived from Virginia and the garrison was relieved after sev- 
eral months of siege. Through all the preceding winter the 
woods ill the vicinity of the settlement swarmed with Indians. 
Provisions grew scarce. Though there was plenty of game 
it was dangerous to hunt. One youth of seventeen succeeded 
in eluding the watch of the Indians, and, through all the win- 
ter, escaped from the vicinity of his fort before day on the 
only horse that remained to the garrison, loaded it with game 
killed beyond the hearing of the beleaguering enemy, and, 
with an unfailing caution and skill, succeeded in returning at 
night, thus preserving the besieged from starvation or cap- 
ture. 

Even the children sometimes displayed the prudence and 
intrepid resolution which was the prevailing tone of the society 
about them. It is related that three boys, the oldest not 
twelve years of age, were surprised by a few Indian warriors 
on the banks of the Ohio, near Louisville, but out of sight of 
their home, wdiose locality was unknown to the savages. To 
have made it known to them would ha\-e been its ruin, and the 
death or captivity of the family. With great presence of mind, 
the boys misled them as to its nearness, and were carried far 
up into Indiana by their captors, the eldest boy, suppressing his 
grief and fear, keeping up the spirits of his companions, and 
by his liveliness and boldness pleasing the Indians. For some 
weeks they were held in captivity, when, being left in the 
care of an aged Indian and one or two women, during an 
expedition, the young hero killed them while asleep and suc- 
ceeded in finding his way back to tlie river with his two com- 
panions. 

Singular accidents sometimes occurred. Colonel Rogers 
was defeated in an accidental meeting with a body of Indians 
at the mouth of the Licking River. Captain Benham was 
disabled in both legs and another of the party was wounded 
in both arms. They alone of the survivors were left on the 
battle field, far from help. Here they remained for six weeks, 



now THE pionp:ers iikld their ground. 227 

the man with tlie sound legs but useless arms taking the man 
with good arms but useless legs on his shoulders to hunt and 
cook, and so preserved each other from famine and death. It 
was a trying, but often a romantic, time, because courage and 
ingenuity rose to match the difficulty. 

The Cherokees, repulsed by the Tennessee settlers, attacked 
the outlying settlements of Georgia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina and Virginia within striking distance. The author- 
ities of each of these states raised troops which marched into 
the Cherokee country and inflicted a punishment so severe 
tliat the tribe was reduced to the greatest misery and ceased 
to trouble the new settlements for some time. 

In this year (1777), Bartram, an able botanist, visited the 
South, passed through the Creek nation, the English settle- 
ments on the Gulf and those on the Mississippi River. He 
found settlers increasing and many fine plantations in various 
parts. Pensacola had several hundred houses, and an active 
and lucrative trade was carried on with the Indians. 

1778. — Boone w^as surprised and taken prisoner with twenty- 
seven of his men. All were well treated. Boone was greatly- 
admired by the Indians, and they wished to adopt him into 
the tribe. Escaping from them at Chill icothe, Boone traveled 
160 miles in four days, having eaten but one meal in that 
time, and prepared his fort to withstand a siege by several 
hundred Indians, who, lie had learned, were about startinc' to 
attack it. 

General Clarke made an expedition into Illinois and got 
possession of all the English posts in that country. With a 
temporary excejnion, they were held by the Americans during 
the remainder of the war, and a fort was built on the Mis- 
sissippi River. This occupation, together with the heroic 
defense of the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee, secured 
the eastern A^alley to the United States, by the treaty of 
peace made at the close of the war. It also protected the 
rear of the organized States from invasion by the British and 



228 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

their Indian allies. By defending itself, the West defended 
the rest of the country, and contributed to the establishment 
of American Independence. Clarke had, on his tirst inva- 
sion, but 153 men, a part of them being from Kentucky. A 
permanent settlement at Louisville was made in 1778. The 
inhabitants of Tennessee increased greatly in numbers and 
prosperity in this and the previous year. Kentucky contin- 
ued to increase in population rapidly, though much harassed 
by Indian attacks. 

1779. — Vincennes, in Indiana, which had been reoccupied 
by Indians and British troops after Clarke's capture of it, 
was recovered by Clarke, February 25, with eighty-one prison- 
ers and $50,000 worth of military stores. Lexington, Ken- 
tucky, was settled April 17. In May, Colonel John Bowman 
invaded the Indian territory in Ohio. After burning Chilli- 
cothe and capturing 163 horses he retreated. Colonel Rogers, 
with seventy men, was attacked by a large force of Indians, 
near the mouth of Licking River, and only twenty whites 
escaped. Several new settlements were made this year in 
Kentucky. Titles to land having become confused and an- 
noying, Virginia passed land laws and sent a court of com- 
missioners to adjudicate on the claims. They sat until 
April, 1780, settling 3,000 claims. 

Colonel Shelby attacked the Chickamauga Indians (Cher- 
okees) below the rapids of the Tennessee River, -with com- 
plete success. A settlement was commenced in Middle Ten- 
nessee, on the site of Nashville, this year. 

1780. — The winter of 1779 and 1780 was extremely severe. 
Game in the woods and the stock of the settlers were often 
frozen and corn sold for |50 to $175 a bushel, in depreciated 
Continental money. There was much suffering. In June, 
a British and Indian force of 600, commanded by Colonel 
Byrd, of the British army, crossed the Ohio and ascended 
Licking River. They had six cannon. Two block-houses, or 
stations, Ruddle's and Martin's, surrendered at their approach. 



TRIUMI'HANT ^■I(i()K OF THK SKITLKKS IN 1 TSO. 22!> 

For tlie moment there were not, it has been said, over 300 
able-bodied men in all the scattered settlements of the inte- 
rior of Kentucky. For some reason not explained the enemy 
retreated after these two conquests. Gen. George Rogers 
Clarke collected the settlers and the troops in garrison on tiie 
river and invaded the Indian country in Ohio, destroying the 
town and stores of the Miamis, which checked Indian hos- 
tility for the time. 

As soon as spring opened, a large immigration down the 
Ohio took place, three hundred capacious flat-l>oats, with 
families and stock, reaching Louis\'ille, which was incorporated 
as a town, this year, by the Legislatui-e of Virginia. Former 
settlements increased in numl)ers and many new ones were 
commenced, esj^ecially in the neighborhood of Louisville. 

May 26, 1780, St. Louis, the capital of Upper Louisiana, 
was attacked l)y a large force, said to be 1,400 Indians and 
some English othcers and Canadians. About sixty persons 
were killed and thirty taken prisoners, when the enemy with- 
drew, in fear, it was said, of General Clarke then on the Mis- 
sisippi below, or from meeting with French friends among the 
citizens. St. Louis had then nearly 1,000 inhabitants. Clarke 
huilt a fort this spring, on the Mississippi, five miles below 
the mouth of the Ohio. The Chickasaws, who claimed that 
territory, complained that their permission had not been 
asked. 

In this year, the Legislature of Virginia organized three 
counties in Kentucky. In Tennessee, the settlers organized a 
regiment to assist in repelling the British who were endeav- 
oring to force "Western North Carolina into submission. They 
joined with the mountaineers of Virginia and North Caro- 
lina and obtained the complete victory of King's Mountain, 
October 7, in which almost all the British troops were killed 
or taken prisoners. This severe loss was the turning point in 
the fortunes of Cornwallis. Thus, the West struck most 
■eftective blows for American liberty. A corps of these 



230 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Valley men remained east of the mountains to as-sist in the 
last campaign in South Carolina, in the following year. The 
Cherokees again commenced hostilities and marched on the 
settlements. Colonel Sevier met and defeated them, on 
Bojd's Creek. A larger force being gathered, the Cherokee 
towns were destroyed and the tribe forced to make a tempo- 
rary peace. Emigrants followed this army to the French 
Broad River and settlements spread rapidly. 

1781. — In this year a large number of unmarried women 
emigrated to Kentucky to iind husbands and a home among 
the multitudes of unmarried men in that region. The Chick- 
asaws attacked P^ort Jefterson, on the Mississippi. General 
Clarke relieved, but afterward withdrew, the garrison. Col- 
onel Brodhead led an expedition from the upper Ohio on an 
invasion of the Indian country without much effect. The 
Cherokees continued their attacks on unguarded settlers, and 
their country was again invaded and laid waste by the Ten- 
nesseeans. A settlement of Americans was formed at Belle- 
fontaine, IVLonroe County, Illinois, this year. 

1782. — Hostilities continued between Tennessee and the 
Cherokees, but the settlers there were so little scattered that 
they were able to rally in time to defeat an Indian expedition. 

A party of whites from Western Pennsylvania marched 
against the Moravian, or Christian (Delaware) Indians, on the 
Muskingum, and nearly one hundred of these harmless natives 
were murdered, in cold blood, by white men! The inhuman 
act was univei'sally reprobated. In Kentucky Capt. James 
Estill was defeated and killed, March 22; Captain Holder,. 
August 15; and Colonel Lauffherv, Auo-ust 22. Six hundred 
Indians and British besieged (August 15) Bryan's Station, 
defended by iifty or sixty men, but were rejjulsed with a loss 
of thirty men. They were pursued by 182 Kentuckians, who 
were defeated with a loss of sixty-nine killed, twelve wounded, 
and seven taken prisoners. It w^as a disastrous year for Ken- 
tucky. Gen. George Rogers Clarke gathered 1,050 men, in. 



GROWTH AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTIONAK V WAR. 231 

September marched rapidly into the heart of the Indian 
country, 130 miles np the Miami, destroyed ' an immense 
quantity of valuable stores, belonging to the British, and the 
Indian towns and crops. Peace being arranged between the 
United States and England about the same time, Indian ardor 
was somewhat cooled. 

1788. — Kentucky was made a Judicial District and a Dis- 
trict Court opened. 

In 1777 Tennessee had been formed into a county covering 
the whole state. It was called Washington. In 1779 Sullivan 
County was formed; and the third and fourth, formed in tliis 
year (1783), w^ere called Cxreene and Davidson. A flood of 
immigration poured into both regions at the close of the war. 
But one store had ever been opened in Kentucky to this time. 
This year the second dry goods store was established at Louis- 
ville, by Col. Daniel Brodhead. Some distilleries were built 
this year in Kentucky. 

1784. — Virginia ceded her lands northwest of the Ohio to 
the General Government, and Congress forbid settlement there 
until it could obtain titles by treaty and purchase from the 
Indians. A store was opened in Lexington this year. An 
extensive movement toward theAVest after the war, especially 
by officers and soldiers of the disbanded armies, very soon 
doubled the number of inhabitants, and nearly all the choice 
lands then open to settlement were entered in the Land Offices. 
The lirst court house for Washington County, Tennessee, was 
built, being the first in Tennessee, and, for the hrst time, a 
wagon road was opened to the east, from Ilolston Tiiver. 

1785. — The rivers rose this spring to an extraordinary height, 
the Mississippi reaching thirty feet abo^■e the highest water 
mark ev^er known. May 23, a convention held by the Ken- 
tucky settlements urged separation from Virginia, and the 
formation of an Independent commonwealth. Another con- 
vention assembled August 8, and employed still stronger lan- 
guage in its addresses to Virginia and Kentucky. Various 



232 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

new towns were founded, and counties formed, in Kentucky. 
The Indians be<;an to renew their liostilities, and to nuirder 
scattered settlers in all parts of the West. A treaty with 
them was concluded, by General Clarke and others, at Fort 
Mcintosh, at the mouth of the Miami River, which, however, 
the Indians did not respect. Thej stole, October 26, sixty 
horses near Maysville, Kentucky. 

In 1784, Korth Carolina made a conditional cession of 
Tennessee to tlie Federal Government. That state had not 
organized the Tennessee settlements with the thoroughness 
which their effective defense against the Indians required, nor 
was the United States Government prepared to do so. The 
settlers lost patience, called a convention, adopted a consti- 
tution and organized the '' State of Franklin," or Frankland. 
The lirst session of the Legislature of this self-constituted 
state terminated March 31, 1785. North Carolina considered 
this action a revolt, its Legislature repealed the Act of Session 
and proceeded to make laws for the Tennessee counties as 
before. The Tennesseeans persisted and maintained an inde- 
pendent state organization for several years. 

The Illinois settlements were enlarged in 1785, and also in 
the following year, when Indian hostilities recommenced. 
Several settlers were killed and others taken captive. Gen. 
George Kogers Clarke undertook an expedition against the 
Indians, which, from various causes, accomplished nothing. 
Colonel Logan raised about 500 men, penetrated the Shawnee 
country, laid waste eight towns, and killed and captured 
about a hundred warriors, with a loss of but ten men, Spain 
refused the demand of the American Government to permit 
the free navigation of the Mississippi; some of the Eastern 
statesmen were inclined to acquiesce, to the great discontent 
of the settlers in the Yalley, who seemed inclined, in that case, 
to set up a separate government. But patriotism and good 
sense were not wanting to both parties and violent ill-feeling 
subsided in a few months. The '• Pittsburgh Gazette^'' the 



A NEW PERIOD OF GROWTH COMMENCED. 233 

first paper j)ul)lished in the Valley, issued its first number 
July 29, 1786. 

The immigration now numbered yearly, from two to four 
thousand persons, and it is said that 20,000 troops could have 
been raised west of the mountains. 

The Cherokees continuec] to murder settlers and another 
expedition against them held them somewhat in check. 

1787.— A convention of Kentuckians assembled at Dan- 
ville, the capital, to confer in regard to the closing of the 
Mississippi. Finding that the General Government insisted 
on maintaining the rights of the American settlers in the 
Valley, and was disposed to defend them against Spain, 
they quietly dispersed. General Wilkinson went to New 
Orleans with tobacco and other produce and obtained per- 
mission from the Spanish Governor to transport, free of duty, 
on his own account, all the products of Kentucky. 

The " Kentucky Gazette ■' v>^as now established at Lexing- 
ton, being the first newspaper in the state and the second in 
the West. The settlements in Middle Tennessee, on the 
Cumberland, had grown rapidly, but were much harassed by 
the Cherokees and Creeks. An expedition against them from 
Nashville this year, checked their ravages. The Ohio Indians 
were constantly hostile, killing and taking prisoners many 
of the Kentuckians. The " Ohio Company " was formed, 
in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1786, and, in this year, purchased 
one million and a half acres in Ohio, to which private specu- 
lations of men eminent in public position added three and 
a half millions more, and more than three hundred thousand 
acres were o-ranted as bounties to soldiers and actual settlers. 
The Ohio Company organized beforehand a local govern- 
ment and made all arrangements for a vigorous settlement. 
Congress provided for the general government of the whole 
territory in the famous "Ordinance'" of this year. General 
St. Clair was appointed Governor, and 700 troops were 
ordered to the West, for the defense of the settlers. 



234 THE MISSISSIl^PI VALLEY. 

1TS8. — The ''State of Franklin" by tliis time began to 
lose its vitality. North Carolina had pursued a tirni but 
conciliatory policy, and, early in this year, the unauthorized 
government broke down and disappeared. Serious trouble 
with the Indians continued everywhere. The Creeks were at 
war wnth the people of Georgia and massacred the border 
settlers without mercy. 

The 7tli April, 1788, is memorable as the day when the 
first permanent settlement was made in Ohio, by an advance 
party sent by the "■ Ohio Company " to prepare, at Marietta, 
on the Ohio, at the mouth of the Muskingum, a fort and 
houses for the families that were to follow. Many thousand 
settlers pushed their way across the mountains this year. 

Two other settlements were formed in Ohio in 1788, one being 
at Cincinnati. The Spanish authorities at New Orleans, and 
the Spanish Minister to the United States, in this year sought 
to detach the Yalley from the Union, urging Kentucky to- 
declare lierself independent, oifering many advantages of com- 
merce and trade to a newgovermnent; but, with all the disad- 
vantages of distance, great difficulty in communication with the 
Atlantic States, and the ineti'ectual protection afforded b}'- the 
Republic to the frontiers, constantly laid waste by the Indians, 
the people remained fairly loyal to the Union. 

1789. — In this and the following year eight different settle- 
ments were made in Ohio. Kentucky was more harassed by 
Indians than Ohio at this time. In this year the eighth Ken- 
tucky Convention was held, in relation to the formation of a 
state, and Virginia passed her fourth Act of Separation. 
There was opposition in Congress to its immediate admission, 
the northern representatives desiring Vermont, a free state, to 
be admitted at the same time. 

1790. — A ninth convention accepted the conditions of Vir- 
ginia for separation, and arrangements were made for the 
admission of Kentucky as a sovereign state in 1792. The 
population was now 73,677; of which Gl,133 were wliite, 114 



THE FIRST STATE ORGANIZED IN THE VALLEY. 235 

free colored, 12,430 slaves. The wliole Vallej had ahout 
200,000 inhabitants. General Ilannar niai-ehed against the 
Indians but was unsuccessful. 

Tennessee received a Territorial Government in this year, 
William Blount being appointed Governor by President 
Washington. Tennessee had about 37,000 people. 

1791. — The entire frontier, from the Mississippi to Pitts- 
burgh and Georgia, was harassed by the Indians, and prepa- 
rations were made to chastise them. 

In February Congress agreed to admit Kentucky as a state, 
June 1, 1792. In May Gen. Charles Scott marched against 
the Indians with 800 men (Kentuckians), defeated them sev- 
eral times and destroyed several towns. In August Colonel 
Wilkinson led a similar expedition toward the AVabash with 
similar results. Governor St. Clair, the General-in-Chief, 
with an army of 1,400 men, was totally defeated farther in 
the interior, November 4—890 men and sixteen officers being 
killed and wounded. 

November 5, 1791, tlie first newspaper was published in 
Tennessee, called The KnoxmJle Gazette. The town of Knox- 
ville was laid out in this year. 

1792. — June 1, Kentucky became a state, and on the 4th the 
new Legislature met. A new army was gathered for the pro- 
tection of the frontiers; Geiu Anthony Wayne was appointed 
commander, and spent a year in drilling it. Fraiikfoil became 
the capitol of Kentucky, and several towns were founded in 
that state, this year. Colonel Hardin and Major Truman, peace 
commissioners to the Indians, were killed. November G, Maj. 
Adair, commanding 100 men, was defeated, near Eaton, Ohio. 

February 17, 1793, General McGillivray, a half ])lood, and 
chief of the Creeks, a man of education and great abilities, 
died. Ilis rank as General was conferred by AVashington. 
lie received salaries from both the United States and Spain, 
was an astute diplomatist, and very wealthy. The Tennessee- 
ans and Georgians waged a bloody war with the Cherokees 



236 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and Creeks. The last Indian invasions of Kentucky occurred 
this year. General Wayne did not get ready for his grand 
expedition until the season was too far past for a campaign, 
and deferred it to the coining year. November 9, the first 
newspaper in Ohio was established at Cincinnati. It was called 
The Sentinel of the Northioestern Territory. Kentucky was 
actively organizing its State Government. Many new settle- 
ments were commenced, especially south of the Ohio. The 
Ohio settlers were in constant danger from the Indians. 

1791:. — Governor Simcoe, of Upper Canada, erected an Eng- 
lish Fort at the rapids of the Maumee, in April of this year; 
agents of Spain stimulated the Indians to hostility to the 
United States, and French agents endeavored to organize an 
■expedition among the Kentuckians to attack New Orleans. 
~The growing importance of the United States in the Great 
Valley became more and more evident each year. The gen- 
eral government, through 1793, made every effort to procure a 
peaceable settlement with the Indians, which was one reason 
for the delay of General Wayne's attack; but the Indians 
insisted on the withdrawal of all settlers to the south of the 
Ohio, and effective negotiations failed. 

July 26, 1600 Kentucky volunteers joined General Wayne's 
army, and, August 20, he defeated an Indian force of 2,000, 
after an hour's fight, and jnirsued them two miles, up to the 
guns of the British Fort. The battle ground was eleven 
miles southwest of Toledo. The Americans had thirty-three 
killed and 100 wounded. 

For fourteen years the inhabitants of Middle Tennessee had 
been constantly exposed to the attacks of the Cherokees and 
Creeks. In numerous expeditions they had retaliated and 
preserved their settlements from total destruction. On the 
13th of September, 1794, the inhabitants— who had been more 
than usually harassed, many families and individuals having 
been killed, and nearly all the horses in Middle Tennessee 
stolen — assembled to chastise them, invaded the Cherokee 



FINAL CLOSE OF THE OLD INDIAN WARS. 237 

towns, and fought a decisive battle, wliicli procured a toler- 
able state of peace, lasting until the war of 1812. In this 
year a Territorial Assembly was first elected. It met at 
Knoxville, in February. 

The General Government had much difficulty in restraining 
the tide of immigration on all the borders within the limits of 
purchases made from the Indians. The Georgians, especially, 
constantly pressed on the Creeks. Georgia claimed the whole 
territory lying west of it to the Mississippi River, and made 
treaties and sales of land in defiance of the Federal authori- 
ties, and to the intense disgust and rage of tlie Creeks. In 
this year Georgia sold large sections of Alabama and Missis- 
sippi to various land companies. The contracts were repealed 
by the next Legislature, but many hundreds of settlers had 
spread over portions of the lands. These held their ground, 
laying the permanent foundations of settlements in the terri- 
tory, afterwards erected into those states ; but, unhappily, 
the disco7itent of the Creeks, restrained for some years, and 
then inflamed by Tecumseh, produced the terrible retaliation 
of the Creek War of 1813 and 1814. 

1795. — The old Indian AVars were now brought to a close. 
August 3, all the tribes of the Upper Valley signed a treaty, 
at Greenville, Ohio, which continued in force until 1811, when 
Tecumseh united the tribes for another effort to preserve their 
hunting grounds. 

With this year closed the perils from the Indians on the 
Ohio and its tributaries. Nearly the whole of the present 
state of Ohio was now open to peaceful settlement. Forts 
and settlements in Indiana on the Ohio, Wabash, and Mau- 
mee Rivers offered further security to Kentucky and Ohio, 
but the Indians were completely cowed, for the present, and 
heroism had henceforth only nature and the want of markets 
to strugo-le against. 

It is remarkably characteristic of the native American that 
this deadly struggle had no depressing effect, but, on the con- 



238 THE MISSISSIPPI valley. 

trary, was a healthy stimulus to the new settlers. Every blow 
was returned with interest, all distress and trial was borne 
without murmuring, and the axe, the hoe, or the rifle were 
used iu turn with equal cheerfulness and resolution. But it 
left a deep impression on the character of the people, which 
was intensified and developed by later circumstances and 
events. 

This period has been presented in the form of a condensed 
chronicle, to indicate the more important of the events that 
crowded it with excitemei^t and showed the heroic daring of 
the first settlers. A detailed narrative would require too 
much space. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHOLESALE SETTLEMENT UNDER DIFFICTILTIES. 

Kentucky became an independent State just before the close 
of the Indian War, and Tennessee just after. The early explo- 
rations had been made under imminent danger. Indeed, many 
of the first companions of Boone fell under the Indian gun or 
tomahawk before he took his family into the dangerous wild- 
erness. Cabins were raised and cornfields cleared, planted 
and gathered while the exasperated Mingo chief, Logan, was 
takino: a terrible vengeance for the brutal murder of his fam- 
ily, and the year following Kentucky received 500 settlers. 
These were the two Heroic States. The birth of their settle- 
ments occurred while the thunder of commencing war was 
rolling, peal after peal, from Lexington and Bunker Hill to 
Savannah, along the Atlantic coast. Their youth was passed 
under constant attacks from the Ohio Indians on the north and 
the Cherokees and Creeks on the south. In the meantime the 
new l)orn states of the coast had their hands abundantly full in 
asserting independence of the strongest maritine power in the 
vvorkl, whose attacks were invited by a long line of unprotected 
coast. 

The heroes of the wilderness did not emigrate to fiffht the 
Indians, they would gladly have kept the peace, but their 
presence, and especially their agricultural clearings and com- 
fortal)le log cabins, which indicated an intention to stay, were 
regarded Ijy the tribes as a declaration of war. They could 
hope for no certain aid from the other side of the mountains. 
They might feel happy if they could obtain powder and ball 
to protect themselves. " But none of these things moved 
them." The fruitful soil, and sunny bottoms, and shady 
slopes drew them with an irresistible attraction. All that 

239 



240 THE MISSISSIPPI VALI-EY. 

was dear and valuable to them was in constant danger of sud- 
den ruin from a foe that knew no pity and spared neither the 
harmless child, tlie helpless woman, nor the property he could 
not carry away. They were ever ready for a stout defense, to 
strike a quick, sharp blow and then to offer peace, that they 
might resume the axe and the hoe. They were neither tierce, 
revengeful nor melancholy. They bore up hardily against 
ill fortune, and cheerfully, even gaily, enjoyed all the good 
they could win and whatever sunshine fell to their lot. So 
the deeply tried pioneers held their ground, sent cheerful hails 
back across the mountains, and thousands, kindred to them in 
cheerful resolution and contempt of danger because they were 
strong in the hope soon to become prosperous farmers, con- 
stantly joined them. 

Want of a standing body of soldiers to watch and ward 
off danger, want of means, and even of weapons and muni- 
tions of war, want of organization and authority to act when 
action was pressingly renuired, added unspeakably to their 
difficulties and calamities through the whole period. By the 
time these embarrassments were overcome through the state 
organizations, v.'hich permitted efficient action and prevision 
in their own behalf, the danger was over. They had borne 
patiently tlie fearful heat and burden of the day, and now 
they were at liberty to care for their individual, social and 
political interests without disturbance. The best lands had 
already been taken up, their healthy, bold and hardy children 
were throno^ino; around them and immioi-ation beijan to fill 
up all the corners and gaps between their settlcTnents. 

The new lands beyond the Ohio were now opened and the 
great and promising West began to attract New England. 
But the " Old Settlers," of ten or twelve years, v.'ho had 
cleared the way for two lusty young commonwealths, were 
still the heroes of toil, privation and labor. They hurried 
across the Ohio by thousands to commence anew on a still 
richer soil and under more favorable circumstances, and gave 



THE TOILS OF THE EMIGRANTS. 241 

an important degree of tone and direction to the new common- 
wealtlis of the Northwest. For twenty-five years settlement 
was to proceed under great difficulties. There were no roads 
to the East; for ten years the Mississippi was practically 
closed to trade, and when the vast Louisiana territory was 
acquired and the Mississippi was all their own, the transpor- 
tation and the markets in that direction were quite as inade- 
quate to the needs of the large population then gathered in 
the upper Valley as in former years. There was still abund- 
ant opportunity to struggle with difficulty, for everything 
necessary to the development of a vast region and a civilized 
people was yet to be created. Kentucky and Tennessee, as 
lying further east and now comparatively old regions, were in 
the best circumstances. 

In seven years from the close of the Indian War, the North- 
west Territory had gained at least 75,000 inhabitants, besides 
those previously there, those who had been born, and those 
who had died. A large part of these had crossed the moun- 
tains; many of them had traveled nearly one thousand miles 
from their starting point, over roads rude and poor, even in 
the settled part of the East, but for the last few hundred miles, 
indescribably rough and difficult. Perhaps an average of 
fifteen to twenty thousand crossed the mountains to difterent 
parts of the Valley each year. With infinite patience and 
toil they climbed and descended the steep ridges, and labored 
across the levels through deep ruts and mudholes, and then had 
some hundreds of miles farther to travel, ^^)ften through a 
pathless wilderness. 

Only the most indispensable articles could be transported 
so far, and when the journey's end was reached, they were at 
the beginning of a mighty task. The heavy forests were to 
be painfully laid low, and then their branches and trunks 
must be disposed of; the houses and barns were to be built; 
the conveniences and comforts of life were to be created, with- 
in and without. Nearly all this must be the work of their 
16 



242 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

hands, for although the virgin soil would readily give them 
abundance of surplus grain, there was little market for it at any 
price. Difficulty and distance made exchanges with the out- 
side world nearly impossible. A little found its way to IS^ew 
Orleans; a little filtered across the mountains to the Eastern 
seaboard; and thousands of incoming settlers, who were to be 
supplied for a year or more, with the mechanics and traders 
of the towns, made a small local market. As a rule, rude 
comforts were abundant and luxuries very difficult of attain- 
ment — when known at all. 

As the years wore away, however, the arts of the East were 
gradually introduced, the new became old, and difficulties 
were more or less overcome, although the plenty itself became 
an increasing embarrassment; for the cultivated areas of pro- 
ductive soil enlarged more than the markets they could reach. 
The attraction of the West had been such that when the nine- 
teenth century opened the population of the Valley, all told, 
was not far from half a million — two thirds of which was in 
the upper Valley. During the first ten years of the century 
the increase was very large indeed, for, by the census, the pop- 
ulation was, in 1810, about 1,300,000. Ohio and Kentucky 
had received more than half of this increase ; Tennessee and 
Mississippi about as much together as Kentucky; Indiana, 
Missouri and Louisiana together about 100,000; Illinois 
about 10,000, and Michigan probably 1,500. Population was 
largely concentrated near the rivers, especially the Ohio, 
whose shores began to bear the appearance of a long-settled 
region. The resolute energy of the people soon introduced 
order and all the improvements within the reach of labor. 
Much money was invested from the East, or found its way up 
the Mississippi. 

. And now followed three years of war, full of apprehension 
on the borders where the Indians still held their lands and 
resolved to make a final stand under Tecumseh, aided by the 
English Government, against further loss by treaty or force. 



THE \\AK RKMOVES BAKKIEKS TO PKOOKESS. 243 

Ai^ain it was dangerous to be found in the woods alone in 
Indiana, Illinois and j^orthern Ohio, or to build the log 
cabin distant from strong settlements. Yet it had become the 
habit to organize, and territorial officers were at hand to take 
the initiative and guard the points of danger. The population 
of the East was still eager to get to the Land of Plenty and 
Hope, and, as before, war did not prevent immigration, and 
tlie more that it was the war of the Government in a somewhat 
different sense from the war of the Revolution. Tecumseli's 
wider phins among the Western tribes were a failure from the 
first. The battles were fought by the regular soldiers and 
their presence, and the expenditure of Government funds in 
the West, made an unusually favorable opportunity for 
the sale of produce. The commerce of the Atlantic cities 
was dried up by the war on the ocean, and distress fell on the 
East, while the old plenty still reigned in the West. The 
land victories of the war by Western generals about Lake 
Erie and at New Orleans, the death of Tecumseh and the 
complete subjugation of the Creeks, filled the men of the 
Valley with pride and enthusiasm and reflected honor on the 
West and the South. 

Pointless and unsatisfactory as was the close of the war 
with England, in some respects, it was a complete triumph to 
the Yalley by removing effectually the old barriers to advance- 
ment. The Indians of the eastern Valley gave up the 
attempt to stem the tide of aggression and consented to the 
sale of such lands as were required for settlement. The wild 
lands of the West had been repeatedly traversed by soldiers, 
and otherwise more completely studied ; the Government and 
eastern people now fully comprehended that the body of 
w^ealth and the greatest sources of prosperity and power lay 
in the West; and a fever for improvements that should make 
it more accessible grew fast. The road from Philadelphia to 
Pittsburgh was improved. A great national road, called the 
Cumberland, opened the way from the southeast far into the 



244 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Valley ; the building of the Erie Canal was begun ; steamers 
began to ply on the rivers ; Ohio soon undertook to connect 
the river on the south with the lake on the north; and other 
improvements began to smooth the great difficulties to immi- 
gration and prosperity in the northwest. Since 1810, Ohio 
had increased her population, according to the census of 1820, 
by 200,000; Indiana and Illinois had become states, and Mis- 
souri was only waiting the final act of graduatioiL The great 
work of opening the newer parts of the country was still done^ 
however, under difficulties quite unknown at later periods. 

The lower Valley had wonderfully prospered in settlement 
since the Louisiana purchase. Settlements had penetrated 
Alabama from Mobile up the rivers from the south, and as an 
extension of those of Middle Tennessee on the north. In 
1810 there were 10,000 or more whites and negroes in 
Alabama ; Mississippi had grown greatly both from the 
Gulf and the River; Louisiana had become a state in 1812. 
Access to these regions was not so difficult as to the upper 
Valley. The borders, and parts of the interior, were reached 
from the sea and from the upper Valley by the Great River, 
while no mountains separated them from the Atlantic coast. 
When the hostility of the Creeks was overcome, and the 
Chickasaws and Choctaws became willing to sell large tracts 
of their lands, government roads had been long built toward 
the east, over which the cheerful and patriarchal planters of 
Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia had passed with their 
troops of servants, herds and flocks, and their comfortable 
furniture. Settling largely along the rivers, navigable to the 
Gulf, they had less difficulty in finding a market for their 
productions as they began to grow in volume; cotton, sugar 
and rice were profitable, because confined to that climate, and 
they only needed the result of Jackson's conflict with the 
Creeks to render them wealthy and strong from Louisiana to 
Georgia. Mississippi and Alabama became states before 1820, 
and since 1810 the emigrants to the •' Louisiana Purchase," 



GREAT SPREAD OF SETTLEMENTS AFTER THE WAR. 245 

who had crossed the Mississippi River to seek homes, num- 
bered one hundred and fifty thousand. 

Thus the ck)se of the war in 1815 dated the dawn of a new 
era, tliough it was not fully opened till about 1820. Difficul- 
ties, however, were not regarded. The people of the East 
were eager to reach and develop the treasures in the glo- 
rious agricultural Valley that had w\aited so many thousand 
years to be thoroughly comprehended. They and the Valley 
were perfectly matched at last. 

In 1820 the Valley had nearly the same population as the 
thirteen colonies when, in 1769, Tennessee received her first 
settlers — or 2,500,000. Indiana and Alabama had each re- 
ceived about 100,000 since 1815 ; Illinois, about 40,000 ; 
Kentucky and Tennessee each about 150,000 — Tennessee 
this time leading in the number, perhaps from the larger 
emigration from Kentucky across the Ohio and Mississippi; 
but both contributed largely to the increase of newer regions. 
They two, with Ohio, sent at least 100,000 to set an example of 
bold and strong, if uncouth, frontier virtues to the settlers of 
the prairies from older states beyond the mountains. 

Thus, after the war there was a sudden difl:\ision of settle- 
ment, led, perhaps, by the mania for speculation as much as by 
the more moderate desire for a home and property in a soil 
each farm on which was worth a gold mine. Towns sprang 
np as by magic, and he who secured the location before its 
future could be generally comprehended became at once a 
rich man through the rise in the value of the lands. This 
spirit has often been ridiculed by people from more staid com- 
munities wdiose age of rapid growth was long past, but they 
must be a very careless and thriftless people who are so insen- 
sible to the love of gain as not to be moved by such wonderful 
opportunities. It had, indeed, some disagreeable and demor- 
alizing features; but they were displayed quite as much by 
shrewd men who lived by their wits in the East as by actual 
residents in the Valley. 



246 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Transportation on the rivers still continued to be chiefly by 
flatboats, keelboats and barges, of rude and cheap construc- 
tion, floated down by the current and propelled against it from 
below by the stout and muscular arms of hardy men. They 
were often of large size, containing one or more families with 
their household goods, farm implements, stock and more or less 
provisions if they were going to the backwoods. These fam- 
ily boats were of all sizes, and made the great water highway 
an enlivening spectacle. But multitudes of flatboats were 
loaded with farm produce, which was taken down to New 
Orleans for sale, the boats there broken up for lumber, and 
the crews journeyed back by lighter boats, by land, or, in the 
later years, by steamboat. These flatboats continued to be in 
use until the days 'of railways, notwithstanding the multipli- 
cation of steamboats. They were cheap, grain and other pro- 
duce from the upper Yalley was low in price and time was 
not so valuable to men then as now. They counted many 
thousands almost up to 1850. 

This gave rise to a class of boatmen for whom a rude life 
had attractions, who were often boisterously rough and some- 
times criminally violent, among the quiet river towns; but 
usually they were so under the influence of careless merri- 
ment rather than malice. Boisterous joke, and jest, and song 
echoed from the river banks from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. 
It was the unpolished, but free and essentially just and manly, 
opening of a new phase of human experience — a new nation 
was displaying the lusty vigor of its youth and developing, in 
unrestrained and uncultured fullness, the leading characteris- 
tics of the future in the generous and smiling Valley. 

The eftbrts and expenditures of the General Government,, 
of States, and of private wealth and enterprise gradually 
ameliorated the difficulties of the primitive times of settle- 
ment. But at the close of the war, forty years after the 
strong commencement of the stream of immigration had 
fully settled the fact that the West was to be immediately 



SOCIAL HABITS OF THE PIONP^EKS IN 1816. 247 

occupied by Anglo-Americans, the life of the people was still 
that of pioneers, buried in the heart of the continent. In 
1816 there were no markets to speak of but those supplied 
by the people themselves and the vast immigration. Luxury 
and elegance were to be found, to some extent, in the towns 
where outside wealth had surmounted all difficulties, and 
ingenious skill had created comfort in a still wider circle; but 
among the people at large the early difficulties still remained. 
Food was abundant and the more substantial requirements of 
life were nowhere lacking. A primitive simplicity and hearti- 
ness reigned. Kentucky and Tennessee, as the longest settled, 
the most inured to deprivation of the thousand accessories of 
prosperous social life in older countries, furnish the strongest 
picture. All that grain and vegetables, the game of the forests 
and the herds, flocks and poultry yards could furnish, were 
enjoyed in unlimited abundance. To these add fish from the 
streams, the products of the dairy, wild and cultivated fruit, 
with maple or New Orleans sugar as a rarity, and the kitchen 
may be considered richly supplied with the healthiest and 
the best materials for the table. No necessities of economy 
restrained hospitality; a frank, cheerful and independent 
spirit had largely abolished the idea of social distinctions 
except between the white and the black; the difficulties of 
beginnings were past and the situation did not yet permit 
much opportunity of large acquisitions from agriculture. 
Therefore there was little to check social intercourse, there 
was leisure, abundance, and general sympathy to promote it. 

The social habits of the times were unrivaled, perhaps, in 
any time or place, for geniality and heartiness. This was a 
g-eneral tone throu<>;h all the Vallev, varied north of the Ohio 
by the more thrifty and provident habits of the New England 
settlers, whom, yet, the peculiar circumstances inclined to 
greater openness of heart and hand than accorded with their 
ordinary habit. Dangers, privations, hopes and plenty shared 
together, while yet the elements of society were unclassified. 



24S THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

produced singularlv pleasant intercourse. This M^as often in- 
tensified by its rarity in a region so large, where farms and 
settlements were frequently separated by great distances. 
Churches and religions organizations were rare, and great 
gatherings in " camp-meetings" became a feature of the Cen- 
tral Yalley. These were held in the delightful forests, and 
gathered all the inhabitants, to the number, sometimes, of 
many thousands, from great distances around. They, in part, 
served the purposes of social meetings and of the politician, 
who courted acquaintance and public favor, as well as of the 
earnestly religious. Social life had then its Golden Period. 
It was never more free from the deceptions, hollow appear- 
ances and envies of an older country. Dress was simple, in- 
expensive, and chiefly homespun ; manners were truly cordial 
and free, and life was so healthy that there was comparatively 
little vice. It was the frank, open, generous youth of society, 
before the cares, ambitions and antagonisms of later life have 
begun. 

This condition was very gradually changed in after years, 
though the locality was subject to constant transfer. The 
towns were already much like Eastern towns, and society 
there was more or less collected around natural centers. 
Character and condition had begun the work of analysis and 
separation. The introduction of steam on the rivers, the 
spread of a speculating mania, and the gradual withdrawal of 
the wealthy, educated and ambitious into social coteries by 
themselves, soon raised distinctions, in the older regions, but 
community of feeling and free hospitality traveled westward 
with the new settlements. 

By 1820 the depression of the war, the increase of steam- 
boats on the rivers, and the opening of other channels of com- 
munication, had raised the number of recent settlers above 
that of the older residents, and considerably modified the 
character of pioneer life. The poor of Europe flocked in, the 
educated youth of the East, who hoped for more rapid advance- 



THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF THE VALLEY. 249 

ment, came AVest, with enterprising men of business, who 
looked forward here to larger fortunes more easily made. 
What would become of this medley of people of such diverse 
training, habits and character? The question was often asked 
by the philanthropist and statesman with much anxiety. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE STEAMBOAT ERA. 



The leeling of isolation in the upper Valley from the mar- 
kets of the East g-rew as the immigration became wholesale. 
Not only was the distance to tidewater towns across the moun- 
tains far more difficult to pass than that across the Atlantic 
now, but the distances were so great in the Yalley itself, by 
want of roads and the circuitous routes by the rivers, and by 
the impossibility of employing the wind as a motive power, 
to any great or certain extent, that the moving of the only 
materials whereby wealth could be accumulated became in- 
creasingly burdensome and unprofitable. The larger the area 
opened for cultivation the less valuable had produce become. 
The distance from New Orleans to Atlantic seaports by sailing 
vessels was great and the passage perilous. 

So costly was transport, even to those who lived imme- 
diately by the rivers, that little was to be made, and a vast 
amount of labor was required to compass that little. It had its 
compensations in making the inhabitants of the extremes of the 
Yalley known to each other and entered as an element of cul- 
ture into the life and thoughts of the backwoodsmen. It also 
strengthened the bonds of union between the distant parts of 
the country, which M'as no small matter at this early period. 

Yet, those who could only find good lands at a distance from 
the streams obtained little pay for anything they could pro- 
duce. The cost of getting it to market was too great, the 
Yalley was too prolific for so large a number of farmers and 
so much isolation from the world of men and the centers of 
trade. But when this difficulty began to threaten to crush 
the poorer and later immigrants a new motive power was 
developed to wonderful efficiency. The Age of Steam 

250 



THE STEAMBOAT AS AN ELEMENT OF PROGRESS. 251 

was fairly opened about 1820; just wlieu, but for it, tlie 
progress of the Valley would have been crippled. With the 
steamboat the whole situation was changed. Now, a voyage 
to New Orleans from the extremes of the upper Valley could 
be made, and the returns eifected, in less than a month, with- 
out the painful labors and exposures that often shortened 
the lives of the boatmen. The steamboats were capacious 
and could take vast loads down the river in a few days. The 
river system of the Valley seemed the true home of the 
steamboat and the improvement was immense. A vast dis- 
tance was almost annihilated by this wonderful mechanical 
force, and the pulsations of the steamer gave a richer and 
more successful life to the struggling farmer far in the woods 
or on the most distant prairies. It was the power needed 
to give a lively circulation through the wIkjIc body of the 
Valley. 

The result, as condensed from official and other documents 
of the time, was substantially as follows: There were 8 steam- 
ers built on the Ohio previously to 1817, some of which did not 
return after descending to jSTew Orleans, being retained there 
for local trade, or other reasons. They were the trial boats, 
and it was still some years before steam began to aid directly 
and largely in the prosperity of the whole Valley. By 1825, 
so great was the ingenuity and enterprise applied by the bold 
and active men of the West that a hundred or more were in 
use, and some of them were considered the finest boats, both 
for service and elegance, in the world. Thus the manufac- 
turing industry of the Valley wrote " Excelsior " on its ban- 
ner of progress in the early days. 

From 1819 to 1829 the whole number of steamboats built 
was estimated as embracing a capacity of 56,000 tons, at a 
first cost of $5,600,000, with repairs amounting, in the same 
time, to $2,800^000. 'In the year 1829 there were over two 
hundred steamers in use, having a capacity of 35,000 tons, 
their expenditures for fuel, hands, food and other things. 



252 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY- 

amonnting to very near $2,500,000. These boats made 
five or six trips in the year. Twelve years before (1817) the 
trade of the Ohio Valley and " Upper Country " was esti- 
mated at about 2,000 tons annually, in boats which made 
but one trip in the year, with very little expenditure to enrich 
the settlers on the wa)\ 

In 1834 the number of boats was 230, with an aggregate 
capacity of 39,000 tons, and the running expenses amounted 
to $1:,644,000. The amount of fuel consumed in the year cost 
nearly $1,500,000. These boats were more cheaply built than 
in earlier times, and the capital invested in them was estimated 
at $3,000,000. Thus over seven and a half million dollars were 
spent in the Valley merely in conducting the business. In 
1832 it was estimated that, besides the steamboats, 4,000 flat- 
boats descended the river, the whole expenditure on them, in- 
cluding their expenses, being $1,380,000; while the cost and 
expenses of the steamboats in use that year were $5,906,000. 
The value of the produce exported on them was estimated at 
$26,000,000. This was more than $30,000,000 distributed 
broadcast over the Valley by the commerce of the rivers. The 
number of persons deriving their subsistence from employ- 
ment in connection with the making, repairing and working 
of the boats was believed to be about 90,000. These persons 
furnished local markets to the agricultural producers, and the 
cash amounts realized by the farmers, chiefly of the upper 
Valley, were millions on the sale of their crops, besides their 
own support. This continued to increase at a large ratio, for, 
with results so excellent, immigration increased, facilities for 
transportation multiplied, and markets enlarged. The eff'ect 
of this commerce in cheapening what the people of the Val- 
ley wished to import from the Eastern States was great. The 
carriage of goods from the seaboard to Pittsburgh was long 
estimated at $5 to $8 per hundred pounds. They could often 
now import from Philadelphia by way of New Orleans for 
$1 per hundred — a vast gain to the purchaser in the Valley. 



OOMMEKCE OF THE LAKES AMD RIVERS IN 1842. 253 

Official statistics in 18-4:2 indicate an immense devehjpment 
of internal commerce on the rivers and lakes in eight years. 
Six hundred steamboats and four thousand Hatboats were then 
employed. The tonnage of the steaml)oats was 126,000. This 
was largely in excess of the capacity of the entire steamboat 
tonnage of the British Empire at that time. More than 200,- 
000 persons were directly employed in expediting this naviga- 
tion, and the cost of the boats, machinery, furniture, and entire 
annual expenses counted up to about twenty million dollars, 
about fifteen million of which was spent annually in the Valley. 
As the increase in tonnage was more than three hundred per 
cent in ten years, we may suppose that the trade, and its profits 
to the Valley, had increased in the same proportion. 

It is stated that the entire tonnage of all vessels in the 
United States was but two thirds that of Great Britain at 
this time; yet the steamboat tonnage on western waters 
exceeded, by about one third, the same class of vessels belong- 
ing to that " Mistress of the Seas." This fact is an eloquent 
comment on the intelligent energy gained by Anglo-Ameri- 
cans, since, as Anglo-Saxons, they had emigrated from Eng- 
land. The mixture of other nationalities had not weakened 
either intelligence or energy. Finding a new and suitable 
instrument for use, they developed it, notwithstanding their 
want of capital, of skilled labor, and in spite of various other 
difficulties, with a vigor that put the extreme resolution of 
England to the blush. In these instruments of internal com- 
merce it was estimated that, in 1842, $220,000,000 worth of 
commercial exchanges floated on the western waters. At this 
time the entire imports and exports of the whole United States 
amounted to a little less than $250,000,000. If the coast 
trade of the Southern States and rivers not included in the 
$220,000,000 be added— and it was extremely valuable, being 
chiefly cotton and rice for export, and much of the provisions 
of the Southern people, besides almost all the manufactured 
articles they required in exchange — the trade of the Valley 



254 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLFA'. 

must have been considerably iii excess of the whole foreign 
trade of the country. 

The southern Valley was now in a full tide of prosperity, 
and gave itself up almost exclusively to the cultivation of its 
three staples, cotton, sugar and rice. It expanded and glowed 
under its warm southern sun, by the enterprise and wealth of 
its planters and the toil of its dusky laborers. The planters 
loved space, and large plantations everywhere increased. The 
Indians had been removed and their territories occupied; Texas 
was about to be added, and room was abundant. The smaller 
streams bore the cotton to the coast; the rice and sugar found 
their best locality near it. Thus, from the Lakes to the Gulf, 
the intelligent and forceful inhabitants found every desirable 
opportunity for profitable enterprise. All the regions of the 
Yalley offered perennial springs of wealth to a people who 
knew how to open them, and never had a people shown this 
ability so eminently as those who had now found their way 
here. 

In 1820 the preliminaries necessary to the commencement 
of the actual development of all the fields of activity and 
income in the Valley had been supplied. Suitable institu- 
tions and a fairly enlightened political economy had been 
devised, set in operation, and found to work fairly well for 
the time; embarrassing foreign influences had been removed; 
population had been diffused sufficiently to bring all the 
sources of strength to the support of the shrewd energy of 
the people, and tlie application of steam as a motive power 
was about to multiply a hundred fold the effectiveness of 
those energies, and supply the great lack of population for 
the vast work to be done. A large flatboat on the Western 
rivers required forty to fifty men; a steamboat with the same 
number carried perhaps ten times the burden in a fifth part 
of the time, could ascend the current easily and speedily, and 
make several trips during one season. 

In 181T the Erie Canal, connecting the waters and naviga- 



VAST IMMIGKATION BETWKKN 1830 AND 1850. 255 

tion of Lake Erie with tlie Hudson, was commenced. It was 
finished in 1825. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, 
in due time, followed this example ; the wagon road from 
Philadelphia to Pittsburgh was improved; and the Cumber- 
land road rendered communication between the Potomac and 
the Ohio Rivers easy. Although the completion of all these 
channels of internal commerce required more than thirty 
years, some of them were M-ell advanced in 1820, and a jour- 
ney from New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore to the centers 
of population in the Yalley was as rapid and easy as one from 
Boston to Philadelphia in the first years of independence. 
The East and the West were joined by the strong ties of 
interest and trade. 

The effect of the greater freedom and ease of communica- 
tion on the progress of settlement, during this third period 
of Yalley growth, was very remarkable. By 1830 the pop- 
ulation of the Yalley was 4,190,000 — an increase of nearly 
two million in ten years. Indiana, Tennessee and Alabama 
had each gained, in the ten years, about 200,000 inhabitants ; 
Ohio, 350,000 ; the other states from sixty to two hundred 
thousand each ; Michigan about 23,000 ; Arkansas 15,000. 
In 18-40 the population of the Yalley was over 6,700,000, the 
greatest gains being made in the three states lying north of 
the Ohio River ; Alabama, Mississippi and Michigan come 
next ; followed by Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas. From 
1840 to 1850. the o:ain was about three and a half millions. 
About one third of this was gained in Indiana, Michigan, 
Illinois and Wisconsin ; more than one fourth crossed the 
Mississippi, and the remainder settled in the states lying 
between Lake Erie and the Gulf. The population of the 
Yalley in 1850 considerably exceeded that of the whole coun- 
try in 1820— rising above 10.000,000. Yet, in 1860, the census 
showed a gain in the Yalley almost equal to the population 
of the whole Yalley in 1840. 

Between 1840 and 1850 Illinois gained more than 400,000 



256 TlfE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

inhabitants; Indiana over 300,000; Michigan nearly 350,000; 
Wisconsin 275,000; Iowa 150,000; Missouri ahnost 300,000; 
Arkansas 100,000; Louisiana 235,000; Mississippi 370,000; 
Alabama about 280,000; Texas 100,000 or more. Ohio beat 
them all, gaining 470,000. Kentucky people had a fancy for 
emigrating, to '' grow up with a new country," and gained but 
90,000. Tennessee increased by 140,000. These were vast 
changes to take place so suddenly. In a single generation a 
wilderness had become an empire. Many a man who had 
fought the Indians in Kentucky and Ohio in his youth lived 
to see the Yalley under the aspect of an old country, himself 
as lost amid its busy and thriving millions as he had often 
found himself, in early life, among the pathless forests. Cities 
and towns had sprung up, as if by magic, along the rivers and 
lakes. Canals, whose united length might almost span the 
continent, were channels of busy activity, and many hundreds 
of steamers constantly vexed the waters of the great rivers. 
Yet, this was only preliminary to the greater growth that 
was to follow. The cotton of the southern Vallej^ and the 
grain of the northern could not get to the seaboard fast enough, 
with all these outlets. Inexhaustible fertility supplied so 
large a surplus that food was cheap and it would not pay to cul- 
tivate land away from the rivers, and the spaces were so vast 
that ten millions of people could only skirt the streams and 
cover the more accessible prairies. A new carrying agent, of 
greater compass and speed, was required. But neither nature 
nor circumstances seemed willing to deny anything to the 
Beautiful Valley, and what it required was forthcoming. 
With 1850 commenced the great development of the Railway 
System. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE KAILKOAU ERA. 



Tlie floating commerce of the AYest had reached the value 
of $500,000,000 before 1850, the number of steamboats rising 
to 1,190 as early as 1847; and yet the increasing abundance of 
the pi-oducts of the soil kept all the channels of exit glutted, 
or, if they were not, it was only that the requisite cheapness 
of transport failed, and that it was unprofitable to raise all 
that the Valley so bountifully offered to the labor of its 
favored possessors. The situation and aims of southern agri- 
culturists conlined them to their special staples and prevented 
a general development of all the resources of their section; 
they fell behind the North in various lines of progress, and 
both foreign and domestic markets were to be sought through 
the commei-cial and numufacturing cities on or near the coast of 
the North Atlantic. Steamboats could not reach these mar- 
kets directly east, the canals were not adequate to the immense 
business from Lake Erie; the roundabout transport by New 
Orleans from the upper Valley, with the hot tropical seas, 
and the dangers of the South Atlantic coast, made it objec- 
tionable as a route for the transport «>f grain to the northern 
cities, or, as it was thought, to Europe. The steamboat had 
done much for the Valley, but it had its limits of use- 
fulness. These difficulties might jDOssibly be put up with if 
development were to be arrested, or to proceed with a more 
measured step; but the rate of development had been accpiired 
and it must proceed with ever-increasing rapidity. 

The means of overcoming this difficulty had been foreseen 

for twenty years; a new application of steam had begun to 

aid in solving the problem. By 1830 the success of railways 

in the East was fairly assured. Their progress was attentively 

n 257 



258 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

observed from the "West, and it was very soon decided that 
this was the special instrument needed for the development of 
the npper Valley. The interiors of the prairie states and ter- 
ritories were unprofitable for settlement from the inadequate 
supply of lumber, the expense of reaching markets and the 
low price of agricultural products. By the winter of 1835-6 
the great progress made in ten years and the general prosperity 
of the country led the people of the West to feel that nothing- 
was impossible to them. They proposed to cover the prairies 
with railroads and do precisely that which has been done in 
later years. The courage, the self-reliance, the sense of power, 
which had brought them successfully through the Heroic 
Period, through the immense difficulties of the following 
twenty-five years, and had then developed the internal com- 
merce of the country to such vast proportions, by the steam- 
boat, filled them with buoyant exultation. They had sur- 
mounted formidable difficulties with a pertinacious energy 
that certainly gave them the right to feel proudly confident. 
Western Legislatures seemed to fully comprehend the mean- 
ing of the railroad; they saw at once that the results would be 
what they have since become. Young America, in this region 
of boundless opportunities, showed a quickness of apprehen- 
sion and a courage of endeavor equal to the occasion. At this 
time (1836) the Legislature of Illinois incorporated companies 
for building railroads whose contemplated length was three 
tlwusand^ two hundred and eighty -seven miles. The Legisla- 
ture of Missouri incorporated one and contemplated another. 
Such was the spirited feeling of the men of the West! But 
they had not counted the cost, had not yet bargained with cap- 
ital, nor taken possible disasters into the account. The coun- 
try had been growing prosperous beyond any similar experi- 
ence of mankind; grave business men and statesmen lost their 
mental equilibrium with the sight of a growth so rapid, and, 
evidently, so solid; the national debt was extinguished except 
a few hundred thousand dollars, which could not be paid, 



EFFHCTS OF THE FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1837. 259 

though it might have heen done ten times over with funds at 
hand; with a hirge surphis income it determined to lend to 
the states, and the West felt itself thoroughly prosperous. 

"With such fair prospects everybody made haste to be rich, 
and credit was almost unlimited ; the future was judged by 
the immediate past, and its growth freely pledged for loans 
that were expected to multiply results indefinitely. But they 
now received a sad lesson on the evils of over-confidence and 
over-haste. Credit had gone too far and assumed too much. 
An attempt to rectify itself resulted in panic and a hasty 
attempt of lenders to recover from creditors; this could not 
be done at once nor at all without the expected help of the 
future. A sudden fall of values was the result. This created 
great distress, especially in the Valley, where so mucli had 
been invested which could not make returns for years. Kail- 
road projects were therefore mostly abandoned until better 
times and the people of the Valley set themselves to the work 
of repairing the injuries of the storm of disaster. The few 
railways that went on proceeded very slowly. Young Amer- 
ica must learn to be patient as well as courageous. 

Railroads were steadily pressed forward in the East, how- 
ever, so that, in 1850, there were 8,600 miles of road in use. 
Only a few hundred of these were in the Valley ; but those 
in the East, were, in many cases, lines, or parts of lines, built 
from the seaboard cities toward it. Some of them had reached 
its borders. Boston was joined to New York and that city 
with Lake Erie ; Chicago was connected with Detroit near 
Lake Erie; and the upper Ohio was about to be joined to 
Philadelphia and Baltimore by two routes. The East was 
as eager to tap the streams of wealth in the Valley, for its 
own benefit, as the West was to open larger channels for the 
outflow of its abundance for the sake of sale. 

The difiiculty was in a deficiency of capital. Hundreds of 
millions of dollars required to be withdrawn from immedi- 
ately productive pursuits, large returns must be deferred for 



260 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

some years, and some uncertainty must be allowed in many 
of the ventures. In the earlier days this capital could not be 
at once spared. The beginnings already made had exhausted 
the accumulations seeking investment; there must be time 
tor fresh accumulations. This point was suddenly gained by 
the discovery of gold in California. The amount was so large 
and continued to flow so long that capital at once became 
abundant, and by various channels found its way to invest- 
ment in the railroad system of the Valley that had been so 
liberally projected iifteen years before. Some hundreds of 
millions of gold were supplied to the floating, or cash, capi- 
tal of the country when it was most needed. The railroad 
system already united with steamboat navigation to connect 
the lakes and the upper Ohio with the northern Atlantic; 
now a new impulse was given to constuction ; the omissions 
in the chain were filled in; various roads soon crossed the 
Valley, extended down the rivers and along the lakes, to 
compete with the steamboat; the interiors were connected 
with the commercial centers, and any section it was desired to 
completely open up to settlement was supplied with a railroad. 
The great destiny of the Northwest had already l)ecome 
apparent, but it had been embarrassed by the difficulties 
attending the settlement of an interior prairie region, by the 
ice and storms of winter, and by the difliculty of navigating 
the rivers during- the low water of summer. Chicago now 
became a great railroad center as well as port for shipping; 
lines of railway radiated from it in all directions. In 1842 
Illinois had but forty-two miles of railroad and in 1852 but 
one hundred and forty-eight; in 1860 it had 2,811, Wisconsin 
nearly 1,000, and the system had already begun to expand west 
of the Mississippi. Missouri had two lines, begun early in the 
decade. The great lumber regions of Wisconsin and Minne- 
sota now furnished building material in cheap abundance, 
which was distributed where most needed — on the prairies — 
by the railroads. 



KASK AND COMFORT OF SETTLKMKNT WITH KAILKOADS. 2() 1 

The eager desire of the American people to acquire full 
possession of tlie great wealth the Yalley oft'ei-cd them was 
now fully met by facilities equal to their need. The East 
poured its people west in a mighty flood. The i^easants and 
artisans of Europe came by the hundred thousand, replacing 
the drain from the East as well as multiplying the emigrants 
to the West. There was a transfer of millions from the East 
to the AVest. It hardly bore the character of emigration, for 
the railroads often received considerable communities of friends 
and neighbors, with all their movable comforts and belongings, 
set them down together, on some vacant spot on the beautiful 
prairies, and, in a brief space, furnished them all the means of 
replacing their abandoned homes by still more beautiful ones. 
In a year or two the farms had been fenced and tilled, the 
buildings put in order, the village artisans settled to their 
callings, the school and church supplied, and a mature, orderly 
and prosperous community was pursuing its quiet way as 
before in the East. " Going West " was no longer becoming 
pioneers, to suff'er deprivation, to pass through years of strug- 
gle with difliculty before the comforts and advantages left 
could be replaced. With every facility for instantly sur- 
rounding themselves with all the conveniences of life, and 
entering immediately on the work of production, they had all 
the advantages of distant markets brought to their doors, and 
a considerable income could be immediately obtained. 

It was a vast change, suddenly wrought, and the more sud- 
denly that it was now chiefly the prairie that was sought. 
The accessible timbered regions had been settled before. With 
so much ease and convenience of replacing homes and incomes, 
the transfer from the East to the West was made in masses, and 
the gain of population in the Yalley betw^een 1850 and 1860 
was quite as great as had been the whole number as late as 
the year 1838. Wisconsin had received about 470,000; Texas 
nearly 400,000; Tennessee and Kentucky had gained about 
250,000; Ohio 260,000; Illinois more than 800.000; Indiana 



2()2 TIIK MISSISSIPl'I VALLKY. 

320,000; Missouri 500,000; Iowa 480,000; Minnesota lOG,- 
i)00; Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana about 190,000 each; 
Michigan 350,000; Arkansas 227,000; Kansas over 100,000, 
and Nebraska nearly 30,000. Sojne other gains raised the 
whole number considerably above 5,000,000. The center of 
population for the United States was already within the limits 
of the Valley, and every condition of a still greater growth 
and prosperity was abundantly supplied, had enterprise re- 
nuiined unchecked and chiefly contined east of the Rocky 
Mountains. Human aftairs are so arranged tliat the spring 
and summer of a great prosperity are iisually followed by a 
winter of great disaster. It so occurred at this time, though 
not without important compensations. 



CHAPTER XII. 

CONSTITUTIONAL BEGINNINGS BY THE EAELY SETTLERS. 

The people of the colonies which furnished the pioneers 
of the Mississippi Valley were not all of one nationality by 
descent; they were from various classes of society in the Old 
World; and many of the principles that were to be afterward 
embodied in the institutions they created lay, in the earlier 
times, undeveloped in their minds. They were truly attached 
to the mother country, and the customs ruling in the ancient 
homes of their memories and affections were, so far as they 
were suitable, continued in their new surroundings. Yet, in 
spite of their loyalty to influences and bonds that reached 
across the Atlantic, they were all of the stock which had 
built up a vigorous, though turbulent, civilization on the 
splendid ruins of the R<^)man Empire it had overthrown, and 
their circumstances in the Xew AVorld insensibly developed 
the stronger and nobler features of character which lay at the 
root of European history. They were of the races of the 
Feudal Knights of Chivaln.' and Romance, of the Crusaders, 
and of the Xorthinen — of the races that had covered Europe 
with battle-fields, that scarcely ever rested from fighting, and 
yet grew more thoughtful and wise from age to age. 

Transplanted to America with chartered rights to defend 
against all attacks, with endless trials of fortitude and courage 
while subduing a wilderness and conquering the warlike 
Indians, the same resolute character that had kept Europe in 
tumult for fifteen hundred years was more and more drawn 
out. When they made a point they held to it; truly civilized, 
they felt the value of legal governments on which the security 
of property, the comfort of life, and the strength of the* com- 
munity against public enemies depend: they respected author- 

26.3 



264: THE MISSISSll'1'1 VALLET. 

ity, endeavored to keep within legal limits in resisting its 
exactions, and argued and diplomatized with much patience 
for years; but what they had resolved authority should not 
force on them they resisted with unwavering constancy. All the 
colonies, diifering much in many other things, were endowed 
with this sturdiness of character. There was a repressed 
fervor — held in check by prudence and habit — that consist- 
ently animated their lives as a whole. Not much remarked 
on ordinary occasions, it broke out with intensity at great 
crises. This fiery resoluteness lay partly in reserve for 
emergencies, and partly as a steady, stimulating force at 
the springs of action. It is the most useful and admirable 
contradiction in character any people can possess. 

These elements of character crossed the mountains with 
the pioneers of the Valley and w^ere still further developed 
there by a severe and peculiar discipline. The Indian dashed 
against them, as against a rock, and rebounded wounded and 
broken. The French, the Spanish and the English tried 
against them all their arts of war, of diplomacy, and of glit- 
tering promises, with the same result. While, few and unpro- 
tected, they were struggling to build homes and open farms 
in a vast ocean of forest in the far interior, and the colonies 
on the coast were confronting the navies and armies of Eng- 
land, they stood successfully at bay before the Indians, who, 
stimulated by British agents and furnished with British arms, 
sought to sweep them down by the bullet, the tomahawk and 
the firebrand. They not only' stood firm; they knew how to 
strike back with great effect. They completely defeated the 
British Indian Policy in the Valley, and held the outposts 
of the new Republic against great odds — not as soldiers but 
as farmers. Their main business was agricultural; fighting 
was only undertaken when not to be avoided, or to secure 
relief from attack. 

It "w^as extremely fortunate that this people, intent only on 
industrial progress, secured possession of the richest and best 



FORTUNATE ESCAPE OF THE VALLEY FROM KOKEION RTLE. I'ti") 

agricultural region in the world instead of the Spanish, 
French or English. Under the control of a foreign government, 
which would have subordinated the interests of their subjects 
here to their European policy, and have deprived tlieni of 
the freedom of action and the stimulus to enterprise necessary 
to great results, there wonld have been a repetition, more or 
less complete, of the history of Canada and the Spanish 
American colonies. Could the French habitans of Canada 
have developed as freely as the Anglo-Americans in the 
Valley, their history would have been prouder and more 
impressive. Under the policy pursued by France and Spain 
their colonists stagnated ; both character aiul enterprise lay 
dormant. Although England was considerably wiser than 
France or Spain her colonial policy remained a huge stumb- 
ling i)lock to her colonies until within the last fifty years, and 
a part of her recent wisdom is due to the influence and 
example of free America. 

One hundred and forty-four years after the deatli of De 
Soto, La Salle, representing the humane and courteous side 
of the old chivalry brightened with the morning rays of a 
new civilization and a riper age, fell a victim to Jesuit intrigue 
and the disappointed passions of his followers. Had he lived 
and prospered he would have held the lower and central Val- 
ley and a new France would have taken root in the prairies, 
and, in alliance with the Indians, have confined Anglo-Amer- 
ican development to the Atlantic Slope for a long period, at 
least. The character of the Republic, could it have come into 
being so surrounded with adverse influences, must have been 
extremely difl:erent. More compact and concentrated, it would 
have been more European, its thought less free, its growth less 
expansive. The spirit of modern justice can not shed a tear 
over the tragic fate of the heart-broken De Soto. He eml)odied, 
for the Valley, the inhumanity of his country and times — it 
was fitting that an ambition so brutal and unholy should find 
a grave in the waters of the Mississippi. La Salle belonged 



266 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

to more modern times ; he had much of our own appreciation 
of the beautiful Valley, and his ambition might easily have 
been o-ratified without the bloodshed and ruin which w-ere 
essential to the success of Cortez and Pizarro. 

The disastrous close of La Salle's career, in the full strengtli 
and power of a manhood so noble and on the eve of success, 
is painful to contemplate, for his character and as])iratious 
awaken all our sympathy, but the success of his great plans 
would have widely and disastrously changed the history of the 
lirst century of the Republic, and the great wealth of the Val- 
ley would have nourished a sadly imperfect form of European 
civilization. 

Thirteen years after the death of La Salle the Canadian, 
D'Iberville, established a French colony in the lower Val- 
ley; but it was not the time, nor was he the man, to realize 
the broad schemes of the great French pioneer. The 
French settlements on the feverish and unhealthy Gulf 
coast added but slightly to the strengtli and development of 
the germs La Salle had planted on the Illinois. The settle- 
ments there became simple trading posts; the settlers, having 
no stimulus and no vigorous head to think and plan for them, 
bow-ed before the difficulties of the situation and sunk, as 
nearly as their memories and previous habits would permit, 
toward the level of the Indian. The wilderness overwhelmed 
them. They did not settle like the Anglo-Saxon, work out a 
destiny of their own by developing the resources of the country, 
and hewing their way to the outside world. They took life 
easily, hunted, traveled, and cultivated a little; lived in a primi- 
tive simplicity, little above that of the Indians, without acquir- 
ing their vigorous passion for war. Falling, in the lowerValley, 
into hostile relations to the Chickasaws and Choctaws, as the 
early Canadians had done to the Iroquois, and maintaining 
closer relations with France, they preserved a stronger organ- 
ization without developing a much higher or more aggressive 
character. French dominion in the Valley was, therefore, an 



THE VALLEY REJECTS I'KOl'KIETARY GOVERNMENT. 267 

element too feeble njul uiicertuiii to seriously affect its desti- 
nies. They served mainly to exclude a more vigorous intru- 
sion until the true masters and civilizers of the Valley should 
appear. When they were confined, after the conquest of 
Canada, to the west bank of the river, the French inhabi- 
tants on the east bank lost little by retiring across it, for they 
left little but a memory. 

The English constitution contained the germs of freedom, 
and those germs lay even more in the intelligence and character 
of the Anglo-Saxon people than in the policy or traditions 
of Government. Anglo-Americans remembered the princi- 
ples which had often been forgotten by Kings, Lords, and even 
Commons, and proceeded to give them a broad and free inter- 
pretation. Yet progress even in this was slow; and consti- 
tutional beginnings were, at first, on the old English models. 
Soon after the close of Pontiac's war a " Mississippi Com- 
pany " was formed in the colonies, and a petition, signed by 
George Washington, among other Virginia gentlemen, was 
presented to the English Board of Trade for two and a half 
million acres of land in " Ohio." The English Government did 
not look favorably on an extension of the settlements across 
the mountains. Franklin, then the agent of the colonies in 
England, wrote a paper on the " Ohio Settlements " which 
somewhat changed its views, and the concession asked received 
the signature of the king, August 14, 1772, while irregular 
settlement was forl)idden by royal proclamation. The ap- 
proach of the Revolutionary struggle prevented this scheme 
from ripening into act. " West Florida," as the shore of the 
Gulf east of the Mississippi River was called, had passed 
into the hands of the English Government in 1764, and emi- 
gration there was encouraged for commercial and military 
purposes; but the settlements did not then acquire any great 
strength. The coast was unhealthy, and the warlike Creeks 
held the upper regions. 

In 1775 Richard Henderson and other gentlemen, residents 



268 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

of North Oarolina. liaving iornied the ".Transylvania Com- 
pany," purchased territory, in Kentucky and Tennessee, of 
the Cherokees, and founded the first settlements in Kentucky 
at Boonesborough and several other points in that region. 
The government was to be a mixed proprietary and popular 
one, on the plan of many of the colonies, as had probably 
been proposed by the " Mississippi Company." On the 23d 
of May, 1775, having laid the first foundations of four settle- 
ments, the proprietors met representatives from each of them 
in the yet unfinished fort at Boonesborough, to legislate for 
the common interest. The proprietors prepared a document 
answering to a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, and the 
House of Delegates, as the representatives called themselves, 
with all due formalities, prepared such a code of laws as was 
deemed necessary for the present, which was signed by the 
proprietors. This proprietary scheme fell through because 
Virginia claimed the territory west of the mountains to the 
Mississippi River, refused to recognize the treaty of cession 
made to the Company by the Cherokees, and deprived them of 
a valid tit! e to the lands. Proprietary governments were, really, 
a relic of the past. Several attempts were afterwards made to 
introduce them into the Valley, under various modifications, 
but they did not suit the rising genius of the new nation. 
Many complications and vexations in regard to titles soon 
banished them altogether, while the self-reliance enforced by 
the dangers and difficulties of the wilderness soon taught the 
poorer settlers that dependence on proprietors was a hin- 
drance and not a help. 

The misgovernment of royal officers and the high spirit of 
the backwoodsmen of North and South Carolina led to the 
establishment, between 1760 and 1770, of considerable settle- 
ments within the border of the Valley, on the Holston and 
Watauga Rivers, near where the boundaries of Virginia, 
North Carolina and Tennessee now meet. Though beyond 
the recognized boundaries of civilization, they did not pro- 



THE WATAUGA " AKTICLKS OF ASSOCIATION.*' 269 

pose to cease to be civilized, and, in 1772, feeling the need of 
some form of government, with trne American instinct, they 
drew up '' Articles of Association " and established a small 
provisional republic. Rules, or laws, for the government of 
their common interests were adopted and commissioners 
appointed by popular vote to see them properly executed. 
Settlers from Pennsylvania wandered down the Shenandoah 
Valley and the settlement soon spread over into what is now 
Tennessee. For several years these Articles of Association 
formed the only constitution and law of the settlements. The 
executive tribunal appointed under it held sessions at regular 
intervals. It had a clerk, an attorney, and appointed a sheriif. 
The hnvs of Virginia were adopted as the standard by which 
its decisions w^ere rendered. When, in 1776, the decisive 
conflict of the colonies with the Mother Country had over- 
thrown the royal government, from whose injustice they had 
withdrawn to the wilderness, the Watauga settlers within the 
boundaries of Tennessee petitioned to be annexed to North 
Carolina. Tlie Legislature of that state organized a district 
embracing the whole of what became the State of Tennessee, 
which these ardent backwoods republicans called Washington, 
in honor of the great patriot whose recent success in driving a 
British army from Boston filled them with joy. 

In the following year it became a county, with courts, sher- 
iffs and justices of the peace. Virginia made similar provi- 
sion for Kentucky at the same time. Both counties at once 
elected deputies to represent them in the Legislatures of their 
respective states. A constant stream of pioneers increased 
these two settlements to many thousands before the close of 
the war, and several other counties had then been formed. 
They were, nominally, integral parts of Virginia and North 
(Jarolina. 

Really, they suffered the inconveniences of that relation 
Avithout its advantages. The British, as a war measure, sought 
to attack the colonies in the rear by forming alliances with 



270 



TlIK MISSISSlPl'l VALI.KY 



the Indians, funiisliing tliein witli inilitarv supplies and 
stirring up tlieir liostility to the settlers. Holding the ])Osts 
of the French pioneers, from Detroit to the Mississip])i River 
and along the Gulf, they drew a cordon of lii-e around the 
rebels, from the Hudson to the Ohio and from Kentucky to 
Georgia. 

The East had its hands full and could give little aid to 
the West. In January, 1778, Patrick Henry, governor of 
Virginia, commissioned George Rogers Clarke; at liis OAvn 
urgent request, to raise a force for the conquest of the British 
posts in "• The Illinois Country," and, calling for volunteers 
along the frontier, he fell like a thunderbolt on the distant 
post of Kaskaskia, and took possession of it by surprise, July 
4rth, of that year, and contrived, by his admirable daring and 
strategy, to maintain the general superiority of the American 
arms over the British and Indians in that vast wilderness 
during the rest of the war. The Tennesseeans were equally 
successful in thwarting English agents among the Cherokees 
and Creeks, and, furnishing a contingent to the patriot forces 
in the Carolinas, assisted in gaining some of the brilliant 
victories that preceded the fall of Cornwallis. 

But the Indians, though usually defeated, continually 
returned to the attack. The settlers, without any permanent 
military force to protect their quiet progress, were required 
to be ready at any and every moment to lay down the axe and 
the hoe and take up the rifle. Property and life were in con- 
stant peril. Indian hostility did not cease when the independ- 
ence of the country was secured; the General Government 
had but the shadow of power, and state governments were 
absorbed in repairing their own disasters. England still held 
possession of Detroit and the ITp])er Lakes, and hoped yet to 
recover her lost colonies; while Spain held possession of the 
mouth of the Mississippi. The settlements were increased 
by many thousands yearly, but these were largely women and 
eliildren who must be supported by such resources as the 



GREAT NEED OF STATE GOVERNMENTS IN THE WEST. 271 

Valley itself sujiplied, and the more tliey increased the more 
abundant were the opportunities of the Indians to glut their 
vengeance by slaughter aiid booty. 

Thus the formation of an efficient local government became 
an absorbing interest, and immediately after the close of the 
war Kentucky and Tennessee began to agitate constitutiomd 
questions. It had become evident that the state governments 
east of the mountains could not perform their functions suc- 
cessfully in the West; the need of stronger organization there 
was imperative, and yet the embarrassing dependence could 
not easily be shaken off until a detiuite plan was agreed upon. 
Kentucky agitated, negotiated and waited. Tennessee remon- 
strated without effect, and acted by organizing the '' State of 
Franklin." 

Both Virginia and North Carolina took steps between 
1780 and 178-i, looking to the cession of the territories they 
claimed in the West to the Continental Government. That 
government was overwhelmed with debt,, and well tiigh help- 
less for good. It inspired little confidence or respect, and 
the reluctance of the states to grant it larger powers did not 
promise further help from it to the bleeding settlements in 
the Valley. 

The idea was then prevalent that the difficulties of commu 
nication between the East and the West across the mountains 
could not be overcome, and projects of entire independence 
of the East were frequently suggested to the leading settlers 
by intriguers in the interest of foreign governments, by the 
ambitious who found in them promises of personal advance- 
ment, and, perhaps, also, by their own reflections on the vari- 
ous embarrassments of the situation. The bold, decisive and 
enterprising spirit which the necessities of the times culti- 
vated in them would, in any other race, have led to un- 
happy consequences; but their caution and good sense were 
equal to their -s'alor. Kentuck}^ held convention after conv^en- 
tion to mature plans, to ascertain the views of the masses of 



272 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the people, and to negotiate with Virginia, the Mother State. 
Though anxious, and sometimes indignant, at the slow and 
uncertain movements of the Eastern people who dwelt in 
security, while the tomahawk and the firebrand were laying 
waste their infant settlements, they would no nothing illegal. 
They added patience to their otlier virtues, and waited nearly 
ten years for liberty to construct the organization they so much 
needed. 

If Tennessee acted promptly she was no less ready to correct 
the error when it was clearly recognized. The tierce Cherokees 
and Creeks were immediate neighbors, and the Tennesseeans 
were exposed to even greater dangers than the Kentuckians, 
whose enemies were scattered at long distances north of the 
Ohio. Two conventions, in 1784, organized their independ- 
ent State of Franklin, and its first Legislature assembled early 
in 1785. The constitution was completely republican, accord- 
ing to the American idea of that time. The legislative author- 
ity was confided to a single House of Representatives ; the exec- 
utive consisted of a Governor and Council, all elected by vote 
of the citizens. All white people could purchase lands on 
takine; the oath of allemance to the state, and become citizens 
after one year's residence. 

North Carolina had made a conditional cession of Tennessee 
to the General Government, but it had not yet taken eflect. 
Its Legislature highly disapproved the measures of the Ten- 
nesseeans, immediately rev^oked the cession, reclaimed the alle- 
giance of the Franklinites and sought to remove all the causes 
of discontent that liad led to the organization of the independ- 
ent state. With great prudence and moderation it abstained 
from harsh measures, but ordered elections and appointed 
officers as formerlv. The Franklin Government had o^one 
into operation and continued to perform its functions for 
three years; but the citizens gradually fell away from it and 
recognized North Carolina officers and laws, and the unusual 
spectacle was seen of two state governments acting quietly. 



THE POLITICAL MODERATION OF THE I'luNKEKJ;;. 273 

with almost no collision, in the same community. The peo- 
ple caine gradually to believe that thevhad no sufficient reason 
for revolutionary measures, and, in 1798, the Franklin Gov- 
ernment died a natural death. As soon as the United States 
Government, under the new Constitution, went into operation 
both Kentucky and Tennessee were ceded to it. Kentucky 
was waiting to be received into the Union as a state and never 
received a formal territorial organization. Its county oro;an- 
izations and courts, as constituted by Virginia, took care of 
public order until its admission into the Union, June 1, 1792. 
Tennessee was organized under an Ordinance of Congress, 
which ad(.)pted all tlie features of that of 1787 for the Xortli- 
west Terrritory, except in regard to slavery, which had been 
introduced under the laws of Xorth Carolina and remained 
undisturbed. Thus, by their wisdom, moderation and patience 
under the severest temptations to independent action, the sim- 
ple and true common-sense of the pioneers of the Yalley for- 
bore to add to the difficulties which beset the Republic at the 
close of the war, and, though sulfering greatly, bided their 
time for receiving justice and relief. They showed, in these 
early days, before the new nation had organized its strength, 
the healthy, practical instincts that have saved the Republic 
in all its perilous crises, and which are the real source of its 



18 



CIIAPTEE XIII. 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM FOR CREATING NEW STATES. 

While Tennessee was beginning to revise her hastj action 
in disregarding her eastern relations, and Kentucky was show- 
ing herself worthy of independence by her respect for con- 
stitutional restraints, the statesmen of the East were doing 
themselves equal honor in providing for the future welfare 
of the parts of the country not included in the organized 
states. July 13, 1787, the Continental Congress perfected an 
Ordinance for the government of the territory lying between 
the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes. 

This instrument deiined the character of a Territory, as dis- 
tinguished in its government from that of a State, and settled 
the general practice subsequently followed. Some of its pro- 
visions formed part of a political compromise between the 
free and slave states of great importance, and it is here giv^en 
in full. It is called 

THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. 

An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the 
United States Northwest of the River Ohio. 

Be it ordained by the United States in Congress assembled, 
That the said territory, for the purposes of temporary govern- 
ment, be one district, subject, however, to be divided into two 
districts, as future circumstances may, in the opinion of 
Congress, make it expedient. 

Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the estates, 
both of resident, and non-resident proprietors in said territory, 
dying intestate, shall descend to, and be distributed among, 
their children, and the descendants of a deceased child, in 
equal parts; the descendants of a deceased child, or grandchild, 
to take the share of their deceased parent in equal parts 

274 



THE OKDINAKGK OF 1787. 275 

among tliein : And where there sliall be no chihh-en or 
descendants, then in e(|ual parts to the next of kin in equal 
degree ; and, among coUaterals, the cliiklren of a deceased 
brother or sister of the intestate shall have, in equal parts 
among them, their deceased parent's share; and there shall, 
in no case, be a distinction between kindred of the whole and 
half-blood; saving, in all cases, to the widow of the intestate, 
lier third part of the real estate for life, and one third part of 
the personal estate; and this law, relative to descents and 
dower, shall remain in full force until altered by the Legisla- 
ture of the district. And, until the Governor and Judges shall 
adopt laws as hereinafter mentioned, estates in the said Terri- 
tory may be devised or bequeathed by wills in writing, signed 
and sealed by him or her, in whom the estate may be (being 
of full age), and attested by three witnesses: and real estates 
may be conveyed by lease and release, or bargain and sale, 
signed, sealed, and delivered, by the person, being of full age, 
in whom the estate may be, and attested by two witnesses, 
provided such wills be duly proved, and such conveyances be 
acknowledged, or the execution thereof duly proved, and be 
recorded within one year after proper magistrates, courts,' and 
registers, shall be appointed for that purpose; and personal 
property may be transferred l)y delivery; saving, howev^er, to 
the French and Canadian inhabitants, and other settlers of the 
Kaskaskias, St. Vincents, and the neighboring villages who 
have heretofore professed themselves citizens of Virginia, 
their laws and customs now in force among them, relative to 
the descent and conveyance of property. 

Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid. That there shall 
be appointed, from time to time, by Congress, a Governor, 
whose commission shall continue in force for three years, 
unless sooner revoked by Congress ; he shall reside in the 
district, and have a freehold estate therein in 1,000 acres of 
land, while in the exercise of his office. 

There shall be appointed, from time to time, by Congress, 
a Secretary, whose commission shall continue in force for four 
years, unless sooner revoked; he shall reside in the district, 
and have a freehold estate therein in 500 acres of land, while 
in the exercise of his office; it shall be his duty to keep and 
preserve the acts and laws passed by the Legislature, and the 
public records of the district, and proceedings of the Gov- 
ernor in his Executive department : and transmit authentic 



276 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

copies of such acts and proceedings, every six months, to the 
Secretary of Congress: There shall also be appointed a Court 
to consist of three Judges, any two of whom to form a court, 
who shall have a common law of jurisdiction, and reside in the 
district, and have each therein a freehold estate in oUO acres 
of land, while in the exercise of their oftices; and their com- 
missions shall continue in force during good behavior. 

The Governor and Judges, or a majority of them, shall 
adopt and publish in the district such laws of the original 
States, criminal and civil, as may be necessary, and best 
suited to the circumstances of the district, and report them 
to Congress from time to time; which laws shall be in force 
in the district until the organization of the General Assembly 
therein, unless disapproved of by Congress; but, afterwards, 
the Legislature shall have authority to alter them as they shall 
think fit. 

The Governor for the time being shall be commander-in- 
chief of the militia, appoint and commission all officers in the 
same below the rank of general officers ; all general officers 
shall be appointed and commissioned by Congress. 

Previous to the organization of the General Assembly, the 
Governor shall appoint such magistrates, and other civil offi- 
cers, in each county or township, as he shall find necessary 
for the preservation of the peace and good order in the same : 
After the General Assembly shall be organized, the powers 
and duties of magistrates and other civil officers, shall be 
regulated and defined by the said Assembly ; but all magistrates 
and other civil officers, not herein otherwise directed, shall, 
during the continuance of this temporary government, be 
appointed by the Governor. 

For the prevention of crimes and injuries, the laws to be 
adopted or made shall have force in all parts of the district, 
and for the execution of process, criminal and civil, the 
Governor shall make proper divisions thereof; and he shall 
proceed, from time to time, as circumstances may require, to 
lay out the parts of the district in which the Indian titles 
shall have been extinguished, into counties and townships, 
subject, however, to such alterations as may thereafter be made 
by the Legislature. 

So soon as there shall be 5,000 free male inhabitants 
of full age in the district, upon giving proof thereof to the 
Governor, they shall receive authority, with time and place> 



THE ORDINANCE OF 1787. 277 

to elect Hepresentatives from their counties or townships 
to represent them in the General Assembly: Provided, That, 
for every 500 free male inhabitants, there shall be one Repre- 
sentative, and so on progressively with the number of free 
male inhal)itants, shall the right of representation increase, 
until the number of Re])resentatives shall amount to twenty- 
live ; after which, the number and proportion of Representa- 
ti\'es shall be regulated by the Legislature : Pr'ovided, That 
no person be eligible or qualified to act as a Representative 
unless he shall have been a citizen of one of the United 
States three years, and be a resident in the district, or unless 
he shall have resided in the district three years ; and, in 
either case, shall likewise lioldin his own right, in fee simple, 
two hundred acres of land within the same: Provided, also, 
That a freehold in fifty acres of land in the district, having 
been a citizen of one of the States, and being resident in 
the district, or the like freehold and two years' residence in 
the district, shall be necessary to qualify a man as an elector 
of a Representative. 

The Representatives thus elected, shall serve for the term of 
two years : and, in case of the death of a Representative, or 
removal from ofiice, the Governor shall issue a writ to the 
county or township for which he was a member, to elect 
another in his stead, to serve for the residue of the term. 

The General Assembly, or Legislature, shall consist of the 
Governor, Legislative Council, and a House of Representa- 
tives. The Legislative Council shall consist of five members, 
to continue in ofiice five years, unless sooner removed by 
Congress; any three of whom to be a quorum: and the mem- 
bers of the Council shall be nominated and appointed in the 
following manner, to wit : As soon as Representatives shall 
be elected, the Governor shall appoint a time and place for 
them to meet together; and when met they shall nominate 
ten persons, residents in the district, and each possessed of a 
freehold in five hundred acres of land, and return their names 
to Congress; five of whom Congress shall appoint and com- 
mission to serve as aforesaid; and, whenever a vacancy shall 
happen in the Council, by death or removal from ofiice, the 
House of Representatives shall nominate two persons, quali- 
fied as aforesaid, for each vacancy, and return their names to 
Congress; one of whom Congress shall appoint and commis- 
sion for the residue of the term. And every five vears, four 



278 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

months at least before the expiration of the time of service of 
the members of the Council, the said House shall nominate 
ten persons, qualified as aforesaid, and return their names to 
Congress; five of whom Congress shall appoint and commis- 
sion to serve as members of the Council five years, unless 
sooner removed. And the Governor, Legislative Council, 
and House of Representatives, shall have authority to make 
lav^^s in all cases, for the good government of the district, not 
repugnant to the principles and articles in this ordinance 
established and declared. And all bills, having ])assed by a 
majority in the House, and by a majority in the Council, shall 
be referred to the Governor for his assent; but no bill, or 
legislative act whatever, shall be of any force without his 
assent. The Governor shall have power to convene, prorogue, 
and dissolve the General Assembly, when, in his opinion, it 
shall be expedient. 

The Governor, Judges, Legislative Council, Secretary, and 
such other officers as Congress shall appoint in the district, 
shall take an oath of affirmation of fidelity and of office; the 
Governor before the President of Congress, and all other offi- 
cers before the Governor. As soon as a Legislature shall be 
formed in the district, the Council and House assembled in 
one room, shall have authority, by joint ballot, to elect a Del- 
egate to Congress, who shall have a seat in Congress, with a 
right of debating, but not of voting, during this temporary 
government. 

And, for extending the fundamental principles of civil and 
religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, 
their laws and constitutions are erected; to fix and establish 
those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and 
governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in the- 
said territory; to provide also for the establishment of States, 
and pernument government therein, and for their admission 
to a share in the Federal Councils on an equal footing with the 
original States, at as early periods as may be consistent with 
the general interest: 

It is hereby ordained and declared by the authority afore- 
said, That the following articles shall be considered as arti- 
cles of compact between the original States and the people 
and States in the said Territory, and forever remain unalter- 
able, unless by common consent, to wit: 

Art. I. No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and 



THE OKDINANCE OF 1787. 279 

orderly manner, shall ever be molested on acconnt of his 
mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said Territory. 

Art. II. The inhabitants of the said Territory shall always 
be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, and of 
the trial by jnry, of a proportionate representation of the peo- 
ple in the' Legislature; and of judicial proceedings according 
to the course of common law. All persons shall be bailable, 
unless for capital offenses, where the proof shall be evident 
or the presumption great. All tines shall be moderate; and 
no cruel or unusual punishments shall be inflicted. No man 
shall be deprived of his liberty or property, but by the judg- 
ment of his peers or the law of the land; and, should the 
public exigencies make it necessary, for the common preserva- 
tion, to take any person's property, or to demand his particular 
services, full compensation shall be made for the same. And, 
in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood 
and declared, that no law ought ever to be made, or ha\'e force 
in the said territory, that shall, in any manner whatever, inter- 
fere with or affect private contracts or engagements, honafide^ 
and without fraud, jireviously formed. 

Art. III. Religion, morality and knowledge, being ne- 
cessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall forever be encour- 
aged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards 
the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken 
from them without their consent; and, in their property, 
rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, 
unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but 
laws founded in justice and humanity, shall, from time to 
time, be made for preventing wrongs being done to them, and 
for preserving peace and friendship with them. 

Art. IY. The said Territory, and States which may be 
formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this Confed- 
eracy of the United States of America, subject to the Arti- 
cles of Confederation, and to such alterations therein as shall 
be constitutionally made; and to all the acts and ordinances of 
the United States in Congress assembled, conformable thereto. 
The inhabitants and settlers in the said Territory shall be sub- 
ject to pay a part of the federal debts contracted, or to be 
contracted, and a proportional part of the expenses of gov- 
ernment, to be apportioned on them by Congress according to 
the same common rule and measure by which apportionments 



280 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

thereof shall he made on the other states; and the taxes, for 
paying their proportion, shall be laid and levied by the author- 
itv and direction of the Legislatures of the district or districts, 
or new States, as in the original States, within the time agreed 
ii])on by the United States in Congress assembled. The Leg- 
islatures of those districts or new States shall never interfere 
with the primary disposal of the soil by the United States in 
Congress assembled, nor w4th any regulations Congress may 
find necessary for securing the title in such soil to the hona 
fide purchaseVs.'^ No tax shall be imposed on lands the prop- 
erty of the United States; and, in no case, shall non-resident 
proprietors be taxed higher than residents. The navigable 
w^aters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the 
carrying places between the same, shall be common highways, 
and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said Terri- 
tory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any 
other States that may be admitted into the Confederacy, with- 
out any tax, impost or duty, therefor. 

Art. y. There shall be formed in the said Territory, not 
less than three nor more than five States; and the bound-^ 
aries of the States, as soon as Virginia shall alter her act of 
cession, and consent to the same, shall become fixed and 
established as follows, to wit: The western State in the said 
Territory, shall be bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio and 
Wabash' Rivers ; a direct line drawn from the Wabash and 
Post St. Yincent's due north, to the territorial line between 
the United States and Canada; and, by the said territorial 
line to the Lake of the Woods and Mississippi. The middle 
Stfvte shall be bounded by the said direct line, the Wabash from 
Post St. Yincent's to the Ohio, by the Ohio, by a direct line 
drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami, to the 
said territorial line. The eastern State shall be bounded by the 
last mentioned direct line, the Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the said 
territorial line: Provided^ however, and it is further under- 
stood and declared, that the boundaries of these three States 
shall be subject so far to be altered, that if Congress shall 
hereafter find it expedient, they shall have authority to form 
one or two States in that part of the said territory which lies 



*Act of 25th February, 1811, provides the same in Louisiana; and, also, 
that hinds sold by Congress shall not be taxed for five years after sale— in 
Mississippi, by act of 1st March, 1817, and so of all others. 



THE LIDKKAL CHARACTER OF THE ORDINANCE. 281 

north of an east and west line drawn tlirongli the soutliei'lv 
bend or extreme of Lake Michigan. And, whenever any of 
the said States shall have 60,000 free inhabitants therein, such 
State shall be admitted, by its delegates, into the Congress of 
the United States on an equal footing with the original States 
in all respects whatever, and shall be at liberty to form a per- 
manent Constitution and State Government: Promded, the 
constitution and government so to be formed, shall be repub- 
lican, and in conformity to the principles contained in these 
articles; and so far as it can be consistent with the general 
interest of the confederacy, such admission shall be allowed 
at an earlier period, and when there may be a less number of 
free inhabitants in the state than sixty thousand. 

Art. VI. There shall be neither slavery nor inv^ oluntary ser- 
vitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment 
of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: 
Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, 
from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of 
the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed 
and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or ser- 
vice as aforesaid. 

This ordinance was an instrument of great significance. 
It defined, simply and clearly, the relations of the territory 
not organized into sovereign states to the rest of the country. 
As this territory was held to be the common property of all 
the states, theircommon liberties were introduced into it. No 
citizen of any state could feel himself deprived of any general 
rights by removal to it. Provision was made for as vigorous a 
government from the first, under the oversight of the National 
Legislature, as the scattered condition of the settlers permitted 
for the election of a Territorial Legislature as soon as the free 
male inhabitants of legal age numbered 5,000; and for the 
fornnition of States in the new Territory, and their admission 
into the Union, on an equal footing with the original States, 
as soon as a moderately numerous population flowed in. It 
defined the future and cheered the settlers with the assurance 
of care, protection and ultimate equality with other sections 
and local independence, setting at rest the questionings and 



282 THE MISSISSIPPI VAI.LEY. 

strivings that had so long disturbed Kentucky and Tennessee. 

It was, virtually, a territorial constitution. Although, in 
form and origin but a law of Congress, and subject to repeal 
and alteration by the same, or any subsequent. Congress, it 
laid down principles so just and wise as to be accepted by 
future legislators as an authoritative precedent, and presided^ 
thenceforth, over the destinies of all the common possessions 
of the Union and the preliminary organization of more than 
twenty states. It illustrates the admirable quality of the 
Anglo-Saxon mind, which plants itself on principles rather 
than forms, but which, having found a suitable form for the 
expression of an important principle, steadfastly respects that 
form so long as it does not interfere with growth. The Eng- 
lish Constitution is quite made up of such precedents, and the 
real Constitution of the United States is by no means wholly 
contained in the written instrument bearins; that name. 

The Ordinance of 1787 rested, in one point, on a compro- 
mise such as has rarely been seen but among people of Anglo- 
Saxon descent, whose good sense, moderation, and bargaining 
instincts have often enabled them to avoid dangerous conflicts, 
and even sometimes to draw additional security and strength 
from what seemed elements of certain ruin. The introduc- 
tion of slavery into Virginia, in 1620, proved fruitful of 
dangers and disasters to American liberty. Moral, social and 
industrial antagonisms gradually sprung out of it and threat- 
ened the peace and stability of the Union from its beginning. 
The instinctive foresight of danger, the causes of which they 
could not agree to banish altogether, led them to compare 
interests and views and ascertain what settlement of them was 
possible. Collision, apparently, would be fatal; union was 
indispensable; therefore they made terms with each other, 
giving the territory north of the Ohio to the free labor sys- 
tem, and that south of the Ohio to the forced labor system. 
Compromises are often but a tempoi'ary settlement of dis- 
putes, since something is sacriliced on either side for the sake 



THE KEASONS FOK EAKLY COMPllOMISES. 283 

of harmoii}'. If the principles, or interests, sacrificed con- 
tinue to diverge instead of melting into each other, with the 
progress of time, the compromise not only fails but renders 
future settlement more difiicult; the idea of unfaithfulness to 
the terms of the original cum])act embittering one or both 
parties. 

This difficulty subsequently rose into very formidable pro- 
portions on the slavery question ; but the situation immedi- 
ately after the Revolution seemed too critical to allow a vio- 
lent contest, and neither the principles nor the interests 
involved were sufficiently well developed at that time to 
impress those great men with the danger which a compromise 
miirht involve. Other dangers seemed to them more imme- 
diate, and the truce between the two systems of morality, of 
social life, and of labor adjourned conflict and permitted the 
country to grow strong and learn its own mind more fully 
before undertaking a final solution of the problem. The 
conflict necessarily grew more violent as principles became 
more sharply defined, as interests diverged, and the strength 
of the parties increased. No permanent compromise finally 
proved possible and the shock was fearful; but the develop- 
ment of strength had not been equal and the free section 
passed through it with ease, coming out seemingly stronger 
than ever. 

Each period of national history has its own measure of 
wisdom and foresight, its special questions to settle, and its 
instinct of self-preservation. The compromises involved in 
the Ordinance of 1787 and in the Constitution of the United 
States, elaborated a little later in that year, may be accepted, 
when all the circumstances and difficulties of that period are 
weighed, as a proof of the patriotic wisdom and moderation 
of the Fathers of the Republic. They deferred a dangerous 
quarrel until the country could give it all its attention. Other 
questions involving the existence of the State required all 
their thoughts and energies. 



284 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

In July, 1788, the Ordinance went into operation in the 
Northwest Territory. For six years Indian wars retarded 
settlement; but, ten years after the foundations of the first 
town north of the Ohio were laid at the mouth of the 
Muskingum, the Territory was found to have 5,000 free male 
inhabitants over 21 years of age, and the people assumed the 
duty of legislating for themselves. Four years later still, the 
State of Ohio took her place in the Union. The Territories 
of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin were succes- 
sively formed under the Ordinance, as population extended 
into them, and in due time achieved the dignity of States ; 
bnt the Territories so fully managed their own affairs, that, in 
most respects, the change of political status affected the 
interests of the people but slightly. 

The Ordinance which became a virtual constitution for the 
territories, and the Constitution of the United States as sub- 
sequently adopted, were both produced in the summer of 1787. 
The first was almost the last important legislation dune by 
the old '^ Continental Congress." It was the result of toler- 
ably calm and deliberate discussion, no serious difficulties 
interfering to prevent its becoming a satisfactory expression 
of the convictions of its framers. The Constitution, on the 
contrary, was agreed upon in the convention with difh- 
culty, and gave complete satisfaction to few or none of its 
makers. It was largely a compromise between conflicting 
views and interests, and narrowly escaped rejection by the 
States when submitted to them. But the institutions it organ- 
ized and the jealous care for justice and equal libertv among 
all classes and sections — with the exception of the colored 
race — proved equal to the necessities of the case. It was a 
true and great success. 

' The idea of an organic, and not merely a federal, unity was 
conveyed by its preamble. " We, the people of the United 
States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, 
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 



THE STATES AND THE UNITED STATES. 285 

promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of lib- 
erty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish 
this Constitution for the United States of America." 

Only time and circumstances could build up a true senti- 
ment of national unity; but, though the form and expressions 
of the Constitution are a proof of the sagacity of it framers, 
it may be doubted if this point would have been gained but 
for the Valley and its wonderful growth, the broader and 
more national feeling which sprung up in the new interior 
states, and the vast interior commerce which produced a 
close community of interests. 

The relations established by the Constitution between the 
central government and the states, and which exercised a 
general control over their constitutional history and form of 
government, are seen in the following extracts from it. The 
supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United States 
over those of the States is affirmed by Article VI., Section 2, 
as follows: 

" This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or 
which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, 
shall be the Supreme Law of the land, and the Judges in every 
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or 
laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'' 

Certain valuable guarantees are given to the States by the 
Constitution of the United States. Article IV., Section 4, 
secures them a republican form of government: 

" The United States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union, a republican form of government; and shall protect 
each of them against invasion, and on application of the Leg- 
islature, or of the executive (when the Legislature can not be 
convened) against domestic violence." 

x\rticle IV., Section 3, provides for the admission of new 
states and the control of the public territory and property 
without prejudice to the interests of the state. 



286 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

"New states may be admitted by Congress into this Union; 
but no new state shall be formed or erected within the juris- 
diction of any other state, nor any state formed by the junc- 
tion of two or more states, or parts of states, without the con- 
sent of the Legislatures of the states concerned as well as of 
Congress. 

Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all need- 
ful rules and regulations respecting the territory, or other 
property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this 
Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims 
of the United States or of any particular state." 

Each state is to be duly respected by all the others by 
Article TV., Section 1. 

'vFull faith and credit shall be given, in each state, to the 
public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other 
state. And the Congress may, by general laws, prescril^e the 
manner in which such acts, records and proceedings shall be 
proved, and the effect thereof." 

By Article I., Section 9, they are secured uniform privileges 
and a free inter-state commerce. 

" No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any 
state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of 
commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of 
another ; nor shall vessels bound to or from one state be 
obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another." 

By Article IV., Section 2, fugitives from justice or labor in 
one state are to be returned by the others on due legal process. 

" A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other 
crime, who shall iiee from justice and be found in another state, 
shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from 
which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state hav- 
ing jurisdiction of the crime. 

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the 
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of 
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service 
or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to 
whom sach service or labor may be due." 

Article IV, Section 2, gives a guaranty to the citizens of 



PERSONAL EIGHTS SECURED TO ALL. 287 

eacli state, and the ten iirst Amendments secure many valu- 
able personal rights; 

" The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the priv- 
ileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." 

" Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting an 
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise 
tliereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press ; 
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to peti- 
tion the government for a redress of grievances. 

Art. II. A well regulated militia being necessary to the 
security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and 
bear arms shall not be infringed. 

Art. III. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered 
in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in a time 
of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. 

Art. IV. The right of the people to be secure in their 
persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable 
searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrant 
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or 
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched 
and the person or things to be seized. 

Art. V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital 
or otherwise intamous crime, unless on a presentment or in- 
dictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the 
land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, 
in time of war or public danger ; nor shall any person be 
subject, for the same offense, to be twice put in jeopardy of 
life or limb, nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, 
to be a witness against himself ; nor be deprived of life, 
liberty or property, without due process of law ; nor shall 
private property be taken for public use, without just com- 
pensation. 

Art. VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall 
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial 
jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have 
been committed, which district shall have been previously 
ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and 
cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with the witnesses 
against him ; to have compulsory process for obtaining wit- 
nesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for 
his defense. 



288 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Art. VII. In suits at coinnion law, where the vahie in 
controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial b}' 
jury shall be preserved, and no tact tried by a jury shall be 
otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than 
according to the rules of the coininon law. 

Art. VIII. Excessive bails shall not be required, nor 
excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments 
inflicted. 

Art. IX. The enumeration in the constitution, of certain 
rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others 
retained by the people. 

Art. X. The powers not delegated to the United States, 
by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are re- 
served to the states respectively or to the people." 

Article I, Sections 1 and 2, prohibits certain powers to the 
states which are of a sovereign nature. 

" iSTo state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confeder- 
ation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit 
bills of credit ; make anything but gold and silver coin a 
tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex-post- 
facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts ; or 
grant any title of nobility. 

No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any 
imports or duties on imports or exports, except what may be 
absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the 
net produce of all duties and imposts laid by any state on 
imports or exports shall be for the use of the treasury of the 
United States, and all such laws shall be subject to the revis- 
ion and control of Congress. No state shall, without the 
consent of Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, keep troops or 
ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or 
compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage 
in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger 
as will not admit of delay." 

Article I, Section 8, determines the extent of the powers 
which, being granted to the National Legislature, are sub- 
tracted from the constitutional powers of the states: 

"• The Congress shall have power — 

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay 



THE CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS (JE CONGRESS. 289 

the debts and provide for the common defense and general 
welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and ex- 
cises shall be uniform throughout the United States: 

To borrow money on the credit of the United States: 

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the 
several states, and with the Indian tribes: 

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform 
laws on the subject of bankruptcies, throughout the United 
States: 

To coin money ; to regulate the value thereof, and of 
foreign coin ; and fix the standard of weights and meas- 
ures : 

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the secu- 
rities and current coin of the United States: 

To establish post offices and post roads: 

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by 
securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the ex- 
clusive right to their respective writings and discoveries: 

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court: 

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the 
high seas, and offenses against the law of nations: 

To declare war ; grant letters of marque and reprisal; and 
make rules concerning captures on land and water: 

To raise and support armies ; but no appropriation of 
money to that use shall be for a longer term than two 
years : 

To provide and maintain a navy: 

To make rules for the government and regulation of the 
land and naval forces : 

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the 
laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel inva- 
sions : 

To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the 
militia, and for governing such part of them as may be em- 
ployed in the service of the United States; reserving to the 
States respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the 
authority of training the militia, according to the discipline 
prescribed by Congress: 

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, 

over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, 

by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, 

become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and 

19 



290 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the 
consent of the Legislature of the State in which the same shall 
be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, 
and other needful buildings: And, 

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other 
powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the 
United States, or in any department or officer thereof" 

The powers bestowed on the President of the United 
States are chiefly executiv^e. He carries into effect the laws of 
Congress and wields the supreme power confided to the Gen- 
eral Government; but he does not trench on the prerogatives 
of the states or of the people in any important point beyond 
those above mentioned. 

The United States Judiciary is the legal judge of the mean- 
ing of, and powers conferred by, the Fedei-al Constitution, No 
restrictions to the constitutional powers of the states and the 
people are, therefore, expressed or implied in the range of 
authority granted to the Executive and Judicial Departments 
of the General Government that are not involved in the grant 
made to the Legislative Branch and in the general regulations 
guarding the national authority. The states and the people 
have supreme power in all cases where it is not expressly taken 
from them. Federal Sovereignty is general, and expressly con- 
veyed; State Sovereignty is local, and absolute where not 
expressly limited. 

Congress determined the time when, and the conditions 
under which, the Territories might proceed to form a Consti- 
tution and organize a State Government ; those conditions 
having been met, the Constitution adopted having provided 
a republican forin of government, and containing no provi- 
sions conflicting with the Constitution of the United States, 
it became a Sovereign State in the American Union, equal in 
all respects to the original States. The Yalley must needs be 
republican, and was guaranteed local self-govermnent. Its 
general interests were naturally and necessarily identified, by 



A LII5KKAL INTERi'UETATION OF THE fONSTIl L ; JoN. 291 

its character and situation, with those of other sections of the 
cpuntrj. Its loss of absolute sovereignty was more than com- 
pensated by sharing, through the United States citizenship of 
its people, representation in the Federal Congress, and free 
trade with other sections of the Union, 

The theory of state and popular riglits presented in the 
Constitution was liberally interpreted, at least through all 
the periods that have been under review. The thirteen states 
that had united in the Revolution had previously been inde- 
pendent of each other; they looked with suspicion on a strong 
central authority, and naturally maintained all the rights of 
the states. It was an acknowledged government of the peo- 
ple, and classes and sections could be favored only with the 
consent of the people themselves. The Valley was the domain 
of all the people, was principally settled by the citizens of 
the United States, and wholly ruled by them. It contained 
the sources of wealth and greatness for the eastern capitalist, 
manufacturer and trader as for the Republic itself; common 
treasures and interests were bound up in its prosperity, and it 
was constantly treated with a fairly wise liberality. 

No irksome conditions were devised, no meddlesome inter- 
ference was practiced, and an interpretation of the funda- 
mental law more frank, just and kind could not easily have 
been imagined. When sectional difficulties found entrance 
they were not between the Valley and the East, but between 
labor systems and social habits which compromises had 
divided by Mason and Dixon's Line ; between free and 
slave states — North and South. Constitutionally, the Valley 
was dealt with most fairly and no people ever had a better 
opportunity to manage their own afi'airs at their own will. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



STATE CONSTITUTIONS. 



The two first States organized in the Valley — Kentucky 
and Tennessee — having been largely settled while they re- 
mained parts of the States of Virginia and North Carolina, 
some of the forms of admission as of preliminary organiza- 
tion, which became customary afterw^ard, were omitted. Feb- 
ruary 4, 1791, Congress consented to the admission of Ken- 
tucky June 1, 1792; while the Convention which framed its 
Constitution did not assemble until April 3, 1792, closing their 
labors the 19th of the same month. The Constitution was 
not submitted for approval either to Congress or to the people 
of Kentucky, but went into operation without opposition. 

Representation was based on the free male inhabitants 21 
years of age. The form of the government was, in general, 
what it continues to be after two revisals, and substan- 
tially the same as those afterwards adopted by all the new 
States. It followed, in many respects, the forms of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, dividing the government into 
three branches: Legislative, Executive and Judicial. The 
Legislature, called the General Assembly, consisted of a Senate 
and House of Representatives. The Governor and Senators 
were appointed by electors chosen by the people. Both of 
these held office for four years; the Representatives for one 
year. There was no Lieutenant-Governor, the President of 
the Senate acting as Governor in case of a vacancy. The 
Judges were elected by the people, but held office during good 
behavior. 

In 1799 this Constitution was revised, giving the election 
of Governor and Senators directly to the people, and pro- 
viding for a Lieutenant-Governor. In 1850 another revision 

292 



THE STATE CONSTITUTION OF TENNESSEE. 293 

was made which gave the Judges definite terms of office. 
Change has been in the direction of more complete popular 
control over lawmakers and officers. 

Tennessee elected a Convention, which completed the prep- 
aration of a Constitution February 6, 1796, and soon after 
transmitted a copy of it to the President of the United 
States, with the notification that the Legislature would meet 
March 28, following, to act on the Constitution, and that the 
Territorial Government would then cease. These confident 
measures, taken without a previous Enabling Act of Con- 
gress, produced some opposition in that body, but the Bill 
admitting the State become a law June 1, 1796. The Senate, 
House of Representatives and Governor were elected every 
two years. The Legislature met every other year. There 
"was no Lieutenant-Governor; the Governor could serve but 
six years out of eight ; and the Speaker of the Senate 
acted as Governor in case of a vacancy in that office. The 
Judges and State and District Attorneys were appointed 
by joint ballot of both Houses, and held their offices during 
good behavior. Ministers of the gospel and infidels were 
ineligible to civil office. Every freeman, who was a free- 
holder, 21 years of age, was a voter. 

In 1835 an amended Constitution was ratified by the people. 
The principal changes related to the number of Representa- 
tives and Senators. In 1853 an amendment gave the election 
of the Judges to the people with a term of eight years, and a 
term of six years to State and District Attorneys. The gen- 
eral forms of the Constitution were like those of Kentucky. 
The same care for common school education was evinced. The 
new Constitution of 1835 made every free white citizen, resi- 
dent six months in the county, a voter. 

Slavery in these States had been inherited from Yirofinia 
and North Carolina. Some efibrt was made, in 1799, to secure 
its gradual abolition in Kentucky, but without eftect. The 
first Constitution of Tennesssee did not mention slaverv: 



294 THE MISSISSU'PI VALLEY. 

but the laws of North Carolina, which were adopted, sus- 
tained it. 

Ohio, then called the Northwest Territory, was authorized 
by Act of Congress, April 30, 1802, to form a State Govern- 
ment. The Convention appointed for the purpose completed 
the first Constitution November 29, of the same year, which 
was approved by Congress February 19, 1803, and Ohio 
recognized as a State in the Union. The Governor and 
Senators were elected for two years, the Representatives for 
one year; the other State ofiicers and judges were appointed 
by joint ballot of the General Assembly. The Governor 
must have been a citizen of the United States twelve years, 
resident in the State four years, and thirty years of age. 
The free use of the veto power by General St. Clair, while 
Governor of the territory, had given much dissatisfaction 
which led the framers of the Constitution to exclude the 
Governor from all connection with the enactment of laws. 
In most of the States the Governor's approval and signature 
were essential to the validity of a law. Only white male 
inhabitants 21 years of age, one year resident in the State, 
were legal voters. The sessions of the Legislature were 
annual. There was no Lieutenant-Governor, the Speaker of 
the Senate filling any vacancy occurring in that ofiice. 

A new Constitution was approved by the people in 1851. 
By this the sessions of the Legislature were made biennial, 
and the terms of the Representatives extended to two years. 
State officers and Judges were to be elected by the people, 
and the elective principle was made general. Eight Arti- 
cles, relating to education and benevolent institutions, to the 
public debt and public w^orks, to County and Township organ- 
izations and apportionment for election purposes, to a revision 
of the laws and the mode of amending the Constitution, as 
also the election of a Lieutenant-Governor, were added. 

April 19, 1816, Congress passed an Enabling Act, author- 
izing Indiana to form a State Constitution, which instrument 



CONSTITUTKKXS ()I<^ INDIANA AND LOUISIANA. 205 

was completed by the Convention June 29, of tliat year, 
and Indiana was recognized as a State in the Union by joint 
resolution of Congress, December 11, following. The Consti- 
tution was not submitted to the people. 

The sessions of the Legislature were annual, the Represent- 
atives elected for one year, the Senators, Governor and Lieu- 
tenant-Governor for three years. All white males twenty-one 
years of age, citizens of the United States, and resident in 
thfe State and County one year, were legal voters. The same 
qualifications were required in candidates for the House of 
Representatives. Senators must be twenty-five years of age, 
two years resident in the State and one in the county or dis- 
trict. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor must have 
been citizens of tlie United States for ten years, live years 
resident in the State. The State officers were appointed by 
joint ballot of the two Houses of the Legislature; the Judges 
by the Governor and Senate, for seven years. The Governor 
was ineligible more than six years in nine. 

In 1851 a new Constitution was adopted. It introduced 
the elective principle generally. The terms of Senators, 
Governor and Lieutenant-Governor were extended to four 
years; the terms of Judges were reduced to six years. Vari- 
ous changes were made in the wording, additions made to the 
Bill of Rights, and Articles inserted concerning State benevo- 
lent institutions, finance, forbidding immigration of colored 
persons into the State, and boundaries. 

Louisiana was organized as a Territory of the First Class — 
that is, with a Legislature elected by its inhabitants — March 
2, 1805, and called Orleans. February 20, 1811, it was author- 
ized, by Act of Congress, to form a Constitution and State Gov- 
ernment in conformity with the Constitution of the United 
States and with republican principles as understood by Amer- 
icans. A Convention having framed a Constitution accepta- 
ble to Congress, it was submitted to, and approved by, the 
people of Louisiana, and it became a State in the Union, 



296 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

April 30, 1812. It was the first State formed in territory 
not belonging to the United States when the Constitution 
was adopted, and fear was expressed in Congress that its 
admission was unconstitutional and might lead to a dissolu- 
tion of the Union; but the powerful principle of unity con- 
tributed by the Valley as a whole was much strengthened by 
the admission of a State controlling the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi. 

This Constitution was, apparently, modeled on that adopted 
by Kentucky, in 1799, in its form and general provisions. The 
sessions of the Legislature were annual ; the Senators and Gov- 
ernor were elected for four years, and the Representatives for 
two; Judges were appointed by the Governor and Senate dur- 
ing good behavior. 

November 5, 1845, the people of Louisiana adopted a revised 
Constitution. Sessions of the Legislature were made biennial 
and some other changes were introduced. In 1852 a Conven- 
tion again revised the Constitution, which was ratified by the 
people in the same year. Legislative sessions became annual 
again, the Judiciary and nearly all subordinate ofticers were 
made elective for the first time, A Board of Public Works 
was created and public schools were provided for more fully. 
Every free white male twenty-one years of age, who was a citi- 
zen of the United States, a resident of the State one year and 
of the parish six months, was made a voter, and also eligible 
to the House of Eepresentatives and the Senate. A Repre- 
sentative served two years, a Senator four years. The Gov- 
ernor and Lieutenant-Governor must be twenty -eight years old 
and four years citizens and residents of the State. The Gover- 
nor's term was four years, and he was ineligible for the suc- 
ceeding term. In this State, as in several others in the Valley, 
civil officers were required to make oath that they had not sent 
or accepted a challenge to fight a duel, nor acted as seconds in 
one. 

March 1, 1817, an Enabling Act of Congress authorized 



CON'STITI-TIONS OF MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA. 297 

Mississippi to form a State Government. Its Constitution 
was completed by the Convention August 15, approved by 
the people, and the State was admitted into the Union bv 
joint resolution of Congress, December 10, of the same year. 
, 111 1882 the people ratified a new Constitution, which changed 
the sessions of the Legislature from annual to biennial, the 
terms of Eepresentatives from one to two years, and Senators 
from three to four years; the form of the Judiciary was some- 
what changed, and, from being, at first, appointed by joint 
vote of the two Houses of the General Assembly during good 
behavior, the Judges were elected by the people for a term of 
six years. A Chancellor was elected for six years. Judges of 
the Circuit Court for four years, and Justices of the Peace for 
two years. This is said to have been the first example among 
American Constitutions of making the Judiciary elective, but 
it soon became almost universal. 

Every free white male 21 years of age, who was a citizen 
of the United States, resident one year in the State and four 
months in the })lace of voting, was made an elector or voter. 
Representatives must be 21 years old, have resided two years 
in the State and one year in the county or town ; Senators 
must be 30 years old, have resided four years in the State 
and one in the district; and the Governor must be 30 years 
of age, have been a citizen of the United States 20 years 
and resident in the State five years. He was eligible only 
four years in six. 

An Enabling Act of Congress permitted Alabama to form 
a State Government, March 2, 1819. A Constitution was 
completed by the Convention, ratified by the people, and the 
State admitted by joint resolution of Congress, December 
14, 1819. This Constitution resembled that of Mississippi. 
Amendments were to be proposed by the General Assembly 
and voted on by the people. Changes were made in 1830, 
1846 and 1850. Sessions of the Legislature were, at first, 
annual, but, after 1846, biennial, and elections of members of 



298 THE MISSISSIPPI valley. 

the House clianged in the same way, while the terms of Sena- 
tors were changed from three to four years. In 1830 the term 
of the Judges was limited to six years. It had before been 
durino: o-ood l)ehavior. 

A voter must be a white man 21 years of age, a citizen 
of the United States, resident one year in the State and 
three months within the county, city or town. A Repre- 
sentative must have resided in the State two years, in the 
county, city or town he represents one year, and be twenty- 
one years old. A Senator with the same residence must be 
twenty-seven years of age. The Governor must be thirty 

years of age, a native citizen of the United States, resident 
four years in the State. 

Illinois was authorized to form a Constitution and State 
Gov^ernment, by an Enabling Act of Congress, April IS, 
1818. A Constitution, approved by the people, was presented 
to Congress and approved by it, December 3, in the same 
year. The Legislature held biennial sessions. Representa- 
tives were elected for two years. Senators, Governor and Lieu- 
tenant-Governor for four years. All white male inhabitants, 
resident six months in the State, were authorized to vote. 
Most of the subordinate officers were appointed — the Judges 
and State officers by joint ballot of the two Houses of the 
General Assembly, others by the Governor and Senate. The 
Judges of the Supreme Court were associated with the Gov- 
ernor in approving laws before their passage — a novel feature 
in the Yalley. 

A revised Constitution was approved by the people in 181:8. 
The elective principle took the place of appointment, the veto 
power was confided to the Governor alone. The Judges of 
the SujDreme Court were elected for nine years, of the District 
Courts for six years, County Judges for four years. A Rep- 
resentative must be twenty-five years old, a citizen of the 
United -States, three years resident in the State, and one year 
in the county or district. A Senator must be tliirty years of 



CONSTITUTIONS OF ILLINOIS AND MISSOURI. 299 

Hire, a citizen of the United States, live vears resident in tlie 
State and one year in the district. The Goverjior must have 
been fourteen years a citizen of the United States, ten years a 
resident of the State. 

Articles relating to revenue, corporations, common lands, 
and the public debt were added to this Constitution. A pro- 
posed new Constitution, pre})ared by a Convention in 1861, was 
rejected by the people in 18G2. The votes, for and against, 
were on party lines. One of the features of the separate votes 
on the section relating to the colored race was the marked 
hostility to their citizenship and presence in the State. 

The citizens of Missouri petitioned Congress, in 1818, 
for permission to form a State Government, and a contest, 
continuing two years, ensued in that body between the free 
and slave states, which resulted in an agreement between the 
two sections, in regard to the formation of new States with or 
without slavery as a legal domestic institution, known as tlie 
*' Missouri Compromise." Missouri was to be admitted as a 
slave state but no other was to be formed in the " Louisiana 
Purchase" north of the line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, which 
was, with the exception of a fragment on the southeast, the 
southern line of the "State. This point settled, Missouri was 
authorized to form a State Constitution by an Act of Congress 
which became a law March 6, 1820. A Convention formed the 
Constitution which was approved by the people, and accepted 
by Congress March 2, 1821, which took eft'ect August 10, 
following. 

All free white male citizens of the United States, twenty- 
one years of age, who had resided in the State one year, and 
in the county or district three months, were auth(jrized to vote. 
A Representative must be twenty-four years old, a citizen of 
the United States, two years resident in the State, and one 
year in the county. A Senator must be thirty years uhl, a 
citizen of the United States, four years resident in the State 
and one in the district. The Governor must be thirty-five 



300 THE MISSISSIPPI YALI.EY. 

years of age, a native citizen of the United States, or resi- 
dent of the Louisiana Purchase at the time of its transfer to 
the United States, and a resident in the State four years. 
The General Assembly met once in two years, Representa- 
tives held office two years, Senators, Governor and Lieuten- 
ant-Governor for four years. No acting clergymen or relig- 
ious teacher could hold any office except that of Justice of 
the Peace. The Judges and most of the subordinate officers 
were appointed, until 1S50, when the elective principle was 
generally introduced ; the State officers term, generally, being 
four years and the Judges six years. Amendments were to be 
proposed by two thirds of each House, published in all the news- 
papers one year before the next general election, and ratified 
by two thirds of each House at the next session of the Legisla- 
ture. Amendments were ratified in 1822, 1835, 1849, 1851, 
1853 and 1855, the most important of which introduced the 
elective principle in filling all offices. 

The Constitution of the Republic of Texas, which had 
revolted from Mexico and formed an independent govern- 
ment, was adopted March 17, 1836, by a Convention assem- 
bled for that purpose. Representatives were elected annually. 
Senators and Governor for three years. Judges were appointed 
by joint ballot of the two Houses of Congress. Slavery was 
introduced, and no free person of pure or mixed African blood 
could reside in the country without the special authority of 
(the Texan) Congress. Texas maintained its independence of 
Mexico by force of arms, but sought admission into the Amer- 
ican Union. As it involved the extension of slavery and a 
war with Mexico there was a contest of some years' duration 
over it in the Congress of the United States. One of the 
great political parties of the country favored it. An Act of 
Congress approved the annexation on conditions whicli were 
accepted by Texas, and a joint resolution of Congress, approved 
December 29, 1845, made it a State in the Union. 

A Texas Convention had framed a State Con^ti tution which, 



CONSTITUTIONS OF TEXAS AND ARKANSAS. 301 

October 13, 1845, had been ratiHed by the people and after- 
ward approved by the Congress of the United States, Every 
free male twenty-one years of age, who was a citizen of the 
United States, or of Texas at the time of the adoption of the 
Constitution, resident one year in the State, and six months 
in the county or town, was deemed a qualified voter. All free 
males twenty-one years of age, w^ho had resided in Texas six 
months before the adoption of the Constitution, were deemed 
citizens of the State. A Representative must be a citizen of 
the United States, or of Texas at the time of its admission 
into the Union, two years resident in the State, and one in the 
county, town, or city, and twenty-one years of age. They were 
elected for two years, and the sessions of the Legislature were 
biennial; Senators, the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, 
with the same qualifications as to citizenship, must have re- 
sided three years in the State and must be thirty years of age. 
The Governor's term was two years, the Senator's four. The 
Judges were appointed by the Governor and Senate, for six 
years. The appointing principle obtained in filling most of the 
offices, State and locaL One tenth of tlie revenue of the State 
was set apart for the establishment and support of free schools. 
This Constitution remained unchanged until the civil war. 

Early in 1836 a Convention, ordered elected by the Terri- 
torial Legislature of Arkansas, assembled to prepare a State 
Constitution. The Legislature held that the right so to organ- 
ize was conferred on them by the terms of the treaty which 
conveyed the whole of the Louisiana Purchase to the United 
States, which required that the inhabitants of the ceded terri- 
tory should be admitted, " as soon as possible," to all the 
rights and privileges of citizens of the United States. This 
Constitution was laid before Congress March 1, following, and 
the State admitted June 15, 1836. 

By this Constitution every free white male twenty-one years 
of age, being a citizen of the United States, resident six 
months in the State, was authorized to vote. The General 



302 ■ THE MISSISSIPPI VAI.LKV. 

Assembly met bieiiniully ; Representatives must be twenty-five 
years of age, and were elected for two years ; Senators must 
be thirty years old, resident in the State one year, and were 
chosen for four years; the Governor must be thirty years old, 
have resided ten years in the State if not a native of the 
United States, four years if a native-born American. He 
could hold that office but eight years out of twelve. There 
being no Lieutenant-Governor, the President of the Senate 
filled any vacancy that might occur in the office. The State 
Secretary was chosen by joint vote of both Houses of the 
Legislature for four years, the Treasurer and Auditor for two 
years. The Judges of the Supreme Court must be thirty 
years old and were chosen by joint vote of the Legislature 
for eight years ; the Judges of the Circuit Court must be 
twenty-five years old ^and were appointed for four years. 
Judges of the County Court were appointed by the Justices 
of the Peace of the county, wdio were themselves elected by 
the people, for two years. 

The Justices of the Peace formed the County Court. A 
Constable was elected in each township; a Sheriff, Coroner, 
Treasurer and Surveyor were elected by the voters of each 
county. jSTo infidel could hold a civil office. The incorpora- 
tion of banks was authorized, but this was withdrawn by an 
Amendment ratified in 1846. Amendments to the Constitution 
were made by vote of two thirds of both Houses of one 
Legislature and ratified by the same vote of the next General 
Assembly without direct reference to the people. 

A Constitutional Convention framed a new Constitution, 
in 18G8, wdiich was ratified by the people. It provided for 
the election of a Lieutenant-Governor, introduced the elec- 
tive principle generally, although the Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court was to be appointed by the Governor and 
Senate. Education and finance received much attention, and 
Amendments, after having passed two Legislatures, were to be 
ratified by the people. 



THE STATE CONSTITUTION OF low A. 303 

The inhabitants of Iowa Territory, finding that it had 
over. 80,000 people, did not wait for an Enabling Act of 
Congress, bnt, in 1844, proceeded to form a Constitution, 
which they presented to Congress, for its approval, in De- 
cember of that year. The bonndaries made by that Consti- 
tution covered a considerable part of what is now Minnesota. 
Congress passed a Bill for its admission, with a large 
reduction of Ijoundaries; but it was not accepted by the 
people. August 4, Congress passed an Enabling Act, giv- 
ing the present boundary, a second Conv^ention framed a new 
Constitution in conformity with it, which was ratified by the 
people, and an Act of Congress declared the State a member 
of the Union, December 8, 1846. 

Every white male citizen of the United States, twenty-one 
years of age, resident in the State six months, and in the county 
twenty (after 1857, sixty) days, was an authorized voter. The 
sessions of the General Assembly were made biennial, the 
Representatives elected every second year, with one year's 
residence in the State and thirty days (after 1857, sixty) in 
the county or district, and other qualifications the same as a 
voter. Senators were elected for the term of four years, must 
have the same qualifications of citizenship and residence, and 
be twenty-five years old. The Governor must be thirty years 
old, a citizen of the United States, two years a resident of the 
State. His term of ofiice was four years. 

There being no Lieutenant-Governor, the Secretary of State 
was to fill any vacancy in the office. The Judges of the Su- 
preme Court were appointed by joint vote of the two Houses 
of the Legislature, for six years, the inferior Judges were 
elected by the people, for five years. The other officers of 
the State Government, and most of the local officers, were 
elected for two years. An Article of this Constitution pro- 
vided that the State debt should not exceed $100,000 unless 
authorized by a popular vote, and that only in certain defined 
cases. Another forbade banking and the issue of paper money. 



304 THE MISSISSH'PI VALLEY. 

Certain amendments were found desirable, which were ramed 
by a Convention early in 1857, and the new Constitution was 
ratified by the people in the same year. 

This Constitution authorized a State debt of $250,000, re- 
duced the term of the Governor to two years and provided 
for a Lieutenant-Governor, gave the election of the Judges of 
the Supreme Court to the people, and reduced the term of the 
district Judges to four years. Banking, under certain restric- 
tions, might be authorized by law. Various changes and addi- 
tions were made in most of the other Articles without materially 
altering their substance, and many careful provisions in regard 
to education were introduced, among others an elected Board 
of Education, which was almost a second organized legisla- 
ture for that interest, but might be remodeled or abolished 
by the General Assembly after 1860. 

The people of Michigan sought the permission of Congress 
to form a State Government in 1832, believing they had the 
population required by the Ordinance of 1787. An early mis- 
take as to the position of the southern point of Lake Michi- 
ofan with reference to the mouth of the Miami Ki\'er, at the 
western end of Lake Erie, gave rise to a conflict of boundary 
claims with Ohio, which prevented the passage of an Ena- 
bling Act. Michigan waited until 1835, when, finding by a 
census that they had more than 80,000 inhal)itants, the Leg- 
islative Council of the Territory called a Convention, which 
framed a Constitution. It was ratified by the people, a State 
Government was organized, and application made to Congress 
for admission into the Union. The boundaries of the pro- 
posed State included only the lower peninsula and covered 
some territory claimed by Ohio. 

Congress passed a Bill admitting the State but requiring a 
formal renunciation of the claim to the contested territory by 
a Convention to be called for the purpose, and compensating 
this loss by including the upper peninsula in the boundary of 
the State. The Convention, when called, rejected this condi- 



CONSTITUTIONS OF MICHIGAN AND NVISCoNSIN. :>05 

tion; but a change in popular views led to tlie infornial call- 
ing of another Convention, which accepted the condition, and, 
as this was evidently the decision of a majority of the people, 
Congress passed an Act admitting Michigan into the Union, 
January 23, 1837. The Constitution of 1835 gave to every 
white male twenty-one years of age, and six months resident 
in the State, a right of voting. The sessions of the Legisla- 
ture wei'e annual. Representatives were elected for one year 
and Senators for two: their qualifications including only those 
of voters and of being citizens of the United States. The Gov- 
ernor and Lieutenant-Governor were elected foi- two years, 
must have been five years citizens of the United States, two 
years resident in the State. Judges of the Supreme Court 
were appointed by the Governor and Senate, for seven years. 
Judges of the County Court were elected by the people of the 
county, for four years. The Supreme Court appointed its 
Clerks; County Clerks and Justices of the Peace were elected, 
the former for two, the latter for four years. Other county 
officers were elected for two years. The Secretary of State, 
Auditor-General and Attorney-General were appointed by 
the Governor and Senate, for two years; the State Treas- 
urer by joint vote of both Houses of the Legislature, for two 
years. Careful provision was made for education, a Super- 
intendent of Public Instruction being appointed by joint vote 
of the Legislature on nomination by the Governor, for a 
term of two years. 

A new Constitution was ratified by the people of Michigan 
in 1850. It made the elective principle general, re-organized 
the Judiciary, and added many provisions relating to educa- 
tion, finance, banking, etc. 

Wisconsin, having found by a census, taken in 1846, that she 
had over 155,000 inhabitants, applied to Congress for author- 
ity to form a State government, which passed an Enabling 
Act August 6, 1846. The Constitution, framed by the Con- 
vention appointed for that purpose, was acceptable to Congress 
20 



306 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

but rejected by the people. A census taken in December, 
1847, gave over 210,000 inliabitants. A new Constitution 
having been ratified by the people, Wisconsin was admitted 
into the Union by Act of Congress, May 29, 1848. By this 
Constitution all white males twenty-one years of age citizens 
of the United States, Indians not belonging to any tribe, those 
declared citizens by law of Congress, and foreigners having 
declared their intention to become citizens, all resident one 
year in the State, were deemed qualified voters. The qualifi- 
cations of Representatives, Senators, Governor and Lieutenant- 
Governor were the same as for voters. The. sessions of the 
Legislature were annual, the Representatives elected for one 
year, the Senators for two years, as also the Governor. Judges 
of the Supreme and Circuit Courts were elected for six years; 
Probate Judges and Justices of the Peace for two years. The 
elective principle obtained generally in filling all subordinate 
ofiices. The state debt could not exceed $100,000; careful 
provision was made for education, and amendments were to 
be approved by a majority of all the members elected to both 
Houses of the Legislature at two successive sessions, after 
which they were to be submitted to the people for ratification 
or rejection. The question of calling a Convention to revise 
the Constitution might be submitted to the people by the 
Legislature at its discretion. 

Minnesota, in the latter part of 1857, had about 150,000 
inhabitants, who, not agreeing on the boundaries to be pro- 
posed, did not seek permission of Congress to form a State 
Government. That body, not waiting for the expressed desire 
of the Territory, passed an Enabling Act, February 20, 1857, 
designating the boundaries as now existing. The Territory 
extended westward to the Missouri River, many — and among- 
them a majority of the Territorial Legislature — desired to 
divide the Territory by an east and west line rather than by 
one north and south, as had been done by Congress. An act 
passed by the House of Representatives and Legislative 



THE CONSTITUTION OF MINNES(_)TA. 3"7 

Council of the Territory to remove the ca])ital from St. Paul 
to St. Peter, failed to become a law; a Constitutional Conven- 
tion was called which separated, on party lines, into two 
bodies, each of which proceeded to frame a Constitution. 
Before closing their labors, however, they appointed a com- 
mittee of conference which agreed on a Constitution, which 
was signed in duplicate by each body — they remaining sepa- 
rate to the end. It was ratilied almost unanimously by the 
people and approved by Congress May 11, 1858. 

By this Constitution, white males twenty-one years of age, 
who had resided in the United States one year, in the State 
four months, and in the election district ten days, and who 
were citizens of the United States, foreigners who had declared 
their intention to become citizens, and Indians and half 
breeds who had adopted the customs and habits of civilization, 
were deemed competent to vote. The frequency of sessions 
of the Legislature was to be ascertained by law. The qual- 
ifications of Representatives, Senators, Governor and Lieu- 
tenant-Governor were the same as those of electors, or voters, 
save that the last two must be twenty-five years of age. The 
elective principle was made general in filling oflices. The 
terms of Governor ^and Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of 
State, Treasurer and Attorney General were two years, of 
State Auditor three years. Judges of the Supreme and 
District Courts were elected for seven years ; Judges of the Pro- 
bate, or County, Court and Justices of the Peace for two years. 

The State debt could not exceed $250,000. A provision 
allowing State Bonds, to the amount of $5,000,000, to be 
issued in aid of certain railways, was inserted by an amend- 
ment of 1858, but expunged in 1860. Amendments approved 
by both Houses of any Legislature might be submitted to the 
people. Being ratified by them, they became integral parts 
of the Constitution. A Lemslature mio^ht also submit the 
question of calling a Constitutional Convention to the people. 
Careful provision was made for education. 



308 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

When the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska were organ- 
ized, in 1854, the '" Missouri Compromise " was repealed and 
Kansas became the tield on whicli the contending parties, up- 
hokling and resisting the further extension of slavery, strug- 
ii-led. From both sides of " Mason and Dixon's Line" zealous 
partisans hastened to this Territory to strive for supremacy. 
Great bitterness and considerable bloodshed characterized this 
contest for some years. Efforts to frame a State Constitution 
commenced in August, 1855, by the Free State party, whose 
Convention presented the " Topeka Constitution," which was 
ratified by those w^ho voted, the opposite party not voting. 
The whole proceedings were without legal authority, and were 
severely denounced by the President of the United States. The 
Territorial Legislature, which was of the opposite party, took 
measures for framing another Constitution, in 1850, whicli 
resulted in the " Lecompton Constitution." Only certain 
clauses relating to slavery were presented to the people and 
ratified, the Free State advocates not voting. It was produced 
under legal forms and laid before Congress. Some of its pro- 
visions were deemed inadmissible by that body, whicli pre- 
sented other terms for the decision of the people of the 
Territory. The parties opposing it rallied and defeated it. 
The friends of the Lecompton Constitution had held a pre- 
vious separate election and voted for it, but the voting was 
not at a regular time, and the voters did not equal the number 
of those who had voted against it. A new Convention was 
called, a Constitution framed and submitted to the people, 
who ratified it, in October, 1859, but it was not approved 
by Congress until January 29, 1861, when Kansas became a 
State in the Union. 

Slavery was excluded from the State. The sessions of the 
Legislature were annual, Representatives serving for one year, 
Senators, Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other State offi- 
cers, for two years. Judges of the Supreme Court were elected 
for six years. District Judges for four years, Probate, or County 



CONSTITITTIONS OK KA^SAS AM) .\ Klil; ASK A. 'M)[^ 

Judges, unci Justices of the Peace, for two years. White males 
twentv-one years of age, resident six months in the State and 
thirty days in the election district, who were citizens of the 
United States, and foreigners who had declared their inten- 
tion to become citizens, were competent to vote. No other 
qualifications were required in members of the Legislature oi' 
civil officers of the State. The public debt could not exceed 
$1,000,000. Ameiulments proposed by two thirds of all the 
members elected to a Legislature were to be submitted to the 
people for ratification at the next general election. The same 
majority of the Legislature could submit to the people the 
question of calling a Constitutional Convention, when they 
judged it necessary. A provision was introduced requiring 
the Legislature to pass laws to protect the rights of married 
women to the possession of property independently of the hus- 
band, and to equal rights in the possession of their children. 

The Territory of Nebraska was organized by the same Act 
of Congress that called Kansas Territory into being. In the 
intention of the advocates of slavery extension Kansas was to 
become a slave, and Nebraska a free State, thus preserving 
the balance of free and slave States in the Union. Its north- 
ern position in the line of greatest free State emigration, and 
the comparatively small number of proslavery emigrants also 
pronounced in favor of that destination for Nebraska. There 
was, therefore, no contest here, as in Kansas, over that element 
of dissension in the LTnion. 

The question of a State Government was first j^resented to 
the inhabitants of the Territory in 1860, but not approved. 
By request of the Territorial Legislature an Enabling Act 
was passed by Congress, April, 1S6-1, authorizing the people 
of Nebraska to form a State Constitution. The estimated 
population was, at this time, luit 30,000. Many of the inhab- 
itants did not favor immediate action and the subject was 
suffered to lie .over until 1866, when the Territorial Legisla- 
ture framed a Constitution which was ratified l)y the ]ieo]>le. 



310 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

A bill for the admission of Nebraska as a State into the 
Union passed both Honses of Congress in the same year, but 
not being signed by the President, failed to become a law. 
Early in the next year a new act of admission was passed by 
Congress containing some stipulations not mentioned in the 
Enabling Act. It was vetoed by the President, for that and 
other reasons, but passed over the veto by both Houses and 
became a law, February 10, 1867. The State Legislature 
having accepted the terms of this act, Nebraska was pro- 
claimed a State in the Union, by the President, March 1, 
following. 

This Constitution made every male, twenty-one years of 
age, who was a citizen of the United States, or a foreigner 
who had declared his intention to become a citizen of the 
United States, who had resided in the State, county and elec- 
tion district for the time required by law, competent to vote. 
The sessions of the Legislature were biennial. Representa- 
tives, Senators, the Governor and subordinate State officers, 
except the Auditor, were elected for two years, the Auditor for 
four years; their qualifications were the same as for voters. 
There was no Lieutenant-Governor, the Secretary of State 
filling any vacancy in the Governor's office. Judges of the 
Supreme Court were elected for six years, other Judges and 
Justices of the Peace for terms to be determined by law. 
The State debt could not exceed $50,000. A majority of any 
Legislature could submit the question of calling a Constitu- 
tional Convention to the people. 

The inhabitants of Viro^inia west of the mountains had 
long been discontented with what they considered the une- 
(pial relations of the eastern and western parts of the State. 
When the Legislature of the State, in 1861, joined the 
Southern Confederacy they remained loyal and took measures 
to erect a separate State Go^^ernment by the election of a 
provisional convention which reorganized the -State Govern- 
ment and called a Convention to prepare a Constitution which 



THE STATE (CONSTITUTION oE WEST VIKCiiNlA. oil 

was subiuitted to, and ratified by, the people. Tlie consent 
of the lojal Legislature of Virginia and of Congress having 
been given, the President declared by proclamation, A])ril 
20, 1S02, that West Virginia would become a State in the 
Union at the expiration of sixty days. 

All white male citizens, twenty-one years of age, resident 
one year in the State, who were not of unsound inind, or 
guilty of treason, felony, or bribery at an election, were enti- 
tled to vote. No persons not qnalified voters could hold any 
civil office. Judges must be thirty-five years of age, the Gov- 
ernor thirty, Senators and the Attorney-General tw^enty-five. 
The term of Senators was two years, of Delegates (members 
of the Lower House) one year. The Legislature met once a 
year. The Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer and Audi- 
tor were elected for two years. There was no Lieutenant- 
Governor, the President of the Senate filling any vacancy in 
the Governor's ofiice. Judges of the Supreme Court were 
elected for twelve years, of the Circuit Courts for six years ; 
inferior tribunals were to be organized, and the ofiicers and 
their terms to be ascertained, by law. A Clerk of the Circuit 
Court and Sherifi^, were elected in each county for four years; 
a Recorder, Prosecuting Attorney, Surveyor of Lands and one 
or more Assessors for two years. Townshijjs elected a Su])er- 
visor, Clerk of the Township, Surveyor of Roads, and Over- 
seer of the Poor annually; a Justice of the Peace every four 
years — or two. if the white population exceeded 1,200 — and as 
many Constables as Justices, every two years. Provision was 
made for education, and a General Superintendent of Free 
Scliools for the State might be elected for two years, and also 
County Superintendents of Schools. Amendments might be 
made by a majority of the members elected to two successive 
Legislatures which were then to be submitted to the people 
for ratification; and two thirds of the members elected to 
any Legislature might submit the question of calling a 
(Constitutional Convention to the people, tlie Amendments 



312 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

adopted by the Convention, if called, to be submitted to the 
people. 

Colorado was organized as a Territoiy by an Act of Con- 
gress of March 2, 1861. It authorized the people to elect a 
Legislature — consisting of a Council and House of Kepresen- 
tatives, Treasurer, Auditor and Superintendent of Schools. 
All other officers, including the Governor and the Judiciary, 
were appointed by the President of the United States. In 
March, 1864, an Enabling Act of Congress authorized prep- 
arations for admission as a State into the Union. A Consti- 
tution, framed and submitted to the people the same year, was 
rejected. Another, submitted September 5, 1865, was ac- 
cepted by a small majority and a Legislature and State officers 
elected under it. 

The Act of Congress admitting Colorado was vetoed b}' 
the President, May 15, 1866. A second veto, February 28, 
1867, again adjourned its admission, and, as the j)eople of the 
Territory w^ere not united in desiring admission, the Constitu- 
tion and State Government passed into oblivion. March 3, 
1875, an Enabling Act of Congress was approved, which left 
all further action to the people of the Territoiy and to the 
President. The Constitutional Convention agreed upon a 
Constitution, March 14, 1876, which was submitted to the 
people and accepted by them July 1, and Colorado was pro- 
claimed a State in the Union by the President, August 1, 
following. 

All males twenty-one years old, who were citizens of the 
United States or had declared their intention to become such, 
having resided six months in the State, and in the county or 
town as determined by law, were deemed voters, unless con- 
fined for crime, which disability ceased when they were legally 
set at liberty. Females could vote and hold office in school 
district affairs; and the Legislature could extend the general 
riffht of suffrage to women at its discretion. 

The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, State Superintend- 



THE STATE CONSTITUTION OF OOLOKADO. ',)\o 

ent of Schools and Judges of the SupreiiK! Court, must he ;it 
least thirty years old; the Auditor, Secretary of State, Treasu- 
rer, Attorney-General and memhers of the Legislature must 
he twenty-fi\-e years of age. All these except Senators, were 
elected for two years — Senators for four yeai-s. The Governor 
had all the usual powers conferred by other States. The 
Legislature met biennially on the first Wednesday in Januai-y. 
The Judicial department was vested in Supreme, District and 
Countv Courts and Justices of the Peace. Judi^es of the 
Supreme Court were elected for nine years. District Judges 
for six years, County Judges and District xittorneys for three 
years. 

Elaborate provision was made for education and benevolent 
institutions, to guard against State, county and city debts, and 
to prevent excessive taxation. The ]>rinciple of election to 
office was nearly universal. Much pains was taken to pre- 
vent abuses by corporations, and to protect mining and irri- 
gation. A proposition for a Convention to amend the Con- 
stitution could be sul)mitted by any Legislature to the people, 
or a two thirds vote of all the members could sul)mit to the 
vote of the j)eople Amendments to any one Article of the 
Constitution. Several liberal modifications were introduced 
into the usual Bill of Eights. No public funds were permit- 
ted to be given in aid of denominational schools. All eifort 
was made to protect every liberty and personal or public right. 
Many States in tlie Yalley have, since 1870, endeavored to 
introduce improvements in this direction into their organic 
laws. 

It will be seen by a review of this glance at Constitu- 
tional History that the political institutions of the Valley 
assumed their special forms under the superintendeiice of the 
East. The principles of the Ordinance of 1787 were apj^lied 
by the United States Congress, whose members, for the first 
forty years, were mainly from the Atlantic States; the Con- 
stitution of the United States defined the o-eneral character of 



314 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the new States and gave them equal rights with the " Old 
Thirteen;" and the mass of the settlers who erected them 
were originally residents and citizens east of the mountains. 
The structures erected by the great and wise statesmen of 
the Revolution were singularly well adapted to the genius of 
the people and the wants of the time, as also of the future. 
The work was thorough, the principles comprehensive, and 
the system employed in their application wisely free and 
elastic. 

The sagacity, moderation and love of full and equal justice, 
as well as good order, displayed by the Fathers of the Repub- 
lic, secured so much respect and veneration for their work 
from the people at large that, when they crossed the moun- 
tains and became constitutional architects in their turn, they 
carefully followed the models they had known in the East, 
and especially the forms presented in the Constitution of the 
United States. They were required only to preserve " a repub- 
lican form of government," which gave them great latitude 
in details, but of which they did not very largely avail them- 
selves. The Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of 
all the State Governments Avere substantially alike. The Gen- 
eral Government was so well balanced and proportioned that 
the idea of experimenting for something better does not seem 
to have occurred to them. With English good sense they were 
content to " let well enough alone," and though varying some 
of the details, according tocircumstances,.and enough to show 
that they were not simply slavish and blind imitators, they yet 
followed a common plan so closely that one State Constitution 
is a very fair sample of all — the chief differences lying in the 
wording and subdivisions of the instrument. 

This general similarity, where there was so large an oppor- 
tunity for diversity, shows how much more complete and vital 
is the unity produced by freedom than that obtained by com- 
pulsion. Community of ideas, circulating without pressure, 
banishes antagonisms much more effectually than the stress of 



THE PRUDENCE OF PIONEER LEGISLATORS. 815 

authority. By the wise liberality of eastern statesmen the peo- 
ple of the West were left, with the least possible restriction, 
to fonnd institutions according to their own minds. It was 
virgin ground and it would not have appeared strange if theo- 
rizing and experiment had gone fast and far. They, on the 
contrary, emulated practical eastern wisdom, studied the struc- 
tures already built, and confined experiment to very narrow 
limits. The best models were generally imitated, with intel- 
ligence and judgment, throughout the Valley, and a truly 
national harmony and unity was the result. 

Thus, the Constitutional History of the Yalley is the best 
possible comment on, and justification of, the broad states- 
manship and subtle prudence of the Legislators of the East 
during the last years of the eighteenth centuiy. They trusted 
the people of the teri-itories, governed them — and limited them 
in self-government — as little as possible, and, in return, found 
themselves revered as authorities and tlieir best hopes and 
plans realized with a spontaneity and completeness extremely 
honorable to both sections and fortunate for the destinies of 
the country. 

This respect for the calm and deliberate wisdom and patriot- 
ism of the early legislators of the Republic was a great benefit 
to the Yalley whose early inhabitants were mainly simple 
backwoods farmei's or emigrants from the mass of common 
people in the East. This class has never before been supposed 
equal to the burdens and duties of a j)rofound and broad states- 
manship. Here, however, they were required to found insti- 
tutions, to decide on constitutional policy, and to lay the bases 
of a great national development. They had the penetration to 
discover who was the wisest teacher, and what were the best 
forms and principles to adopt, and their work, as a whole, 
proved to be permanent. No really fundamental remodeling 
has since been required. As the Constitutions were when 
they first went into operation, such they substantially remain. 
Most of the States have amended their Coiistitutions more 



316 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

tliHU once — some of tliem many times — but tlie general 
features have not been altered. 

The changes have, almost uniformly, been only such as a 
rapid growth required — adaptations of minor details to chang- 
ing circumstances. Respect for the popular will has constantly 
increased. The framers of many of the first Constitutions 
did not see the need of consulting the people before setting 
the machinery of government in motion. Such an omission 
has not occurred since the early years of the nineteeth century. 
A large part of the Union, State and local officers obtained 
their places at first by appointment of the Governor, Legis- 
lature or other authority; but the elective principle has stead- 
ily gained ground and few places are now filled otherwise than 
by election. Changes have more often been made in financial 
and educational systems, in the conduct of subordinate local 
aifairs, and in principles of temporary policy, which have be- 
longed, some have thought, more to the legislative than to the 
constitutional field, in which. Legislatures not having produced 
satisfactory results. Constitutional Conventions have tried 
their hand. 

In many of these cases the evil has not seemed to be 
within the reach of Legislatures or Constitutions. Arising 
from the new and perplexing complications of an unexampled 
development, they could be best remedied only by the checks 
and balances indicated by time, by the laws of business and 
society operating freely, and which experiments, legislative or 
constitutional, have often hindered more than they have helped. 
The jostling of interests, public, corporate and private, where 
expansion was so rapid, was unavoidable, and time only could 
show the right remedy. The resort to constitutional regu- 
lation has not, therefore, always been successful and then 
required to be undone, and experiment and change have gone 
on within certain limits; but success and failures in one State 
have been so many lessons for all the rest, and constitutional 
progress has kept a generally even step throughout the Yalley, 



HEALTHY GROWTH CUKES IMPERFECTIONS. 317 

and, to a somewhat less extent, in the rest of the country. 
Ever}^ Constitution contains provision for its own amendment, 
when it is believed necessary, so that the Constitutional sys- 
tem is elastic and renders resort to revolutionary measures 
unnecessary and extremely improbable, especially after the 
emphatic failure of the South in the civil war. The Con- 
stitutional History of the States of the Valley seems to 
have furnished a complete vindication of the wisdom of 
confiding government to the masses of the people. They 
have been generally cautious and temperate and coininon 
sense has proved itself in general, in this field, to be good 
sense. 

Partial, or one-sided examination, indeed, reveals much im- 
perfection, and produces in some minds doubt as to the result. 
A judgment rendered from many part}' and other special 
standpoints frequently leads the prejudiced examiner to a 
serious questioning of the real excellence and success of our 
institutions. Their liberality often seems to have degenerated 
into license, public interests appear to be sacrificed to the 
ambition and greed of individuals, corporations, "'rings," and 
parties, and true patriotism appears to have vanished. There 
have never been wanting many prophets of evil who seemed 
to make a strong case and to prove that the utmost peril was 
imminent. 

The mistake of such views lies in confinino- the observa- 
tion to one class of facts, which seldom fail to be more or less 
exaggerated by the assumptions that make them cover, or 
nearly so,' the whole field of action. More careful and impar- 
tial study invariably discovers that the real evil was, or is, less 
tliaii represented, was but a temporary phase in the general 
current of free movement, or was an eflbrt by short-sighted 
and unworthy men to reach an impossible result. These evils, 
when real, were merely temporary, and only required to be 
distinctly comprehended by the people at large to be neutral- 
ized, and, in the course of time, have disappeared. So uni- 



318 THE MISSISSIPPI \ALI,KV. 

formly has this l)een the case in the whole past history of the 
Eepublic as to tairly justify the position that the prevailing 
character of moral, political, and business life is really healthy 
and sound, that the facts interpreted to the contrary are mis- 
conceived or temporar}^ oi^b'' ^^^'^ ^^^'^^ every evil existing at 
a given time will be replaced by its opposite sooner or later. 
In the cases where these evils are generally recognized and 
continue to exist, the whole past history of the country and 
of each section of it justifies the assumption that the Anglo- 
Saxon thoughtfulness and prudence underlying our whole life 
is only waiting to discover the effectual remedy, which it can 
not believe has yet been found. N'o fault should be found 
with this cautious habit, for it is the real source of strength 
and permanence in both English and American institutions. 
Exjierience and observation have more and more convinced 
this progressive race that radical reforms, hastily undertaken, 
usually defeat their aim by introducing more evils than they 
cure. The good sense of the people, therefore, leads them to 
wait till they can see their way clearly. 

Reform moves slower in England than in the United States 
for the above reason. There is more to be unsettled, and more 
disturbance and confusion must ensue from the greater num- 
ber of habits and relations that have grown up with time. 
The same may be remarked of the Eastern States as compared 
with the Yalley. Re-adjustment is easier and less harmful in 
the newer States, and important changes have more generally 
— indeed, almost always — commenced in the "West, and, if they 
proved successful there, they were adopted later by the East. 
This has been true, among other cases, of the removal of the 
restriction of suffrage to property owners, the extension of the 
elective principle in filling subordinate offices generally, and 
especially the State Judiciary. Constantly protested against 
as dangerous, they have spread from the Yalley to the East 
and thence thrust an entering wedge into the institutions of 
Europe. The dangers prophesied have not been experienced; 



THE USES OF FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY. oil) 

the " leveling " resulting has been " up " instead of " down;" 
and the standard of othcial fitness and purity has improved 
instead of deteriorating; while the wider field of action and 
responsibility assigned to the people has made them more 
thoughtful and more intelligent in their criticism. 

On the whole the Constitutional history of the Yalley has 
proved, more conclusively than had ever before been done, 
that freedom and responsibility tend to raise the masses of the 
people — even the lowest — out of the condition of a tnob — 
moved by blind impulses when it is not ruled by as blind and 
abject a submission to authority— towards manliness and true 
statesmanship. It is they who have been the real authors of 
these Constitutions and of the order and social progress re- 
sulting under them. They have proved themselves true and 
enlightened statesmen. The moderation and wisdom of these 
free and comparatively untutored backwoodsmen afforded a 
striking and significant lesson which was the only justifica- 
tion of the experiment of enfranchising four millions of slaves 
at a stroke. That experiment might well seem dangerous. 
Tliat it has not been ruinous is due to the good sense of the 
Southern whites and to the elevating influence of manhood 
suffrage. The fortunate history of the institutions of the 
Yalley in general, and of that bold venture in particular, 
proves that man is never so dangerous as when deprived of 
manhood rights, and never so worthy and useful as when en- 
joying them in their fullest measure. 



CHAPTER XV. 

NATIONALITY OF EMIGRANTS TO THE VALLEY AND THEIR 
ORIGINAL CHARACTER. 

The tirst immigration across the mountains to the Valley 
in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, beginning about 
1T50, was from Pennsylvania and Virginia — the earliest 
largely from the latter. But the course of the valleys, and 
especially of the Shenandoah, invited the restless in the more 
western settlements of eastern Pennsylvania to move south- 
westward, and people from that state mingled with Virginians 
and IS^orth Carolinians in the first settlements of Tennessee. 
Boone and many of his companions started from North Car- 
olina to settle Kentucky. Tennessee was held to be included 
in the original charter of North Carolina and Kentucky in 
that of Virginia, and, as a more general rule, Tennessee re- 
ceived settlers from North Carolina, and Keiitucky from 
Virginia. 

The first settlers were, in considerable part, from the borders 
or frontiers of the colonies. These backwoodsmen were un- 
comfortable in their relations with the royal governments 
which, after 1760, replaced the charter and proprietary gov- 
ernments, and which, in various ways, encroached on popular 
rights, or resisted the demand of the people for greater free- 
dom and a larger share of influence in public affairs. In 
North Carolina, especially, there had been great discontent 
for a long period. Many resolute and ambitious men, whose 
ideas of their rights and determination to maintain them, 
together with their eagerness to secure better locations than 
the Atlantic coast offered for private gain, studied the remote 
})arts of the country and found their ideal met west of the 
mountains. For the most part they had little property in 

330 



THK MlSSISSIl'l'I VALLEY. :)-2l 

the East, but their hardy enterprise was to secure it for them 
in the West. Altliough there were many of all classes, and 
from Various colonies, who helped to settle the regions south 
of the Ohio, the origin of most was to be traced to tlie labor- 
ing population of the " Old Dominion." and the '' Old North 
State." Many of the re]>resentatives of the best classes of 
English society were to be found in the middle colonies, and 
while multitudes from the lower classes of Europe had filled 
up all the colonies, they had opportunities for '' grading up" 
in the New World that did not exist for them in the Old. 
The "'gentlemen" were far from being a useless class among 
the early colonists. In large part, they furnished a standard 
of good sense, propriety and dignity that made a great im- 
pression on the forming character of the general community 
around them. 

Washington, and a multitude like him, moulded the found- 
ers of the new nation, in the Southern colonies, by present- 
ing an almost ideal type of republican simplicity and nobility. 
This standard of manhood was borne across the mountains in 
the minds of the settlers, and the men who approached it 
most nearly rose to influence and guided social and political 
development in the r Valley. A steady stream of settlers 
flowed into the southwest territory far into the present 
century. 

After the close of the Creek war the Southwest received a 
large part of this stream of emigration from Virginia and 
North Carolina. It had already begun, in the last years of the 
eighteenth century, to join that from South Carolina and 
G-eorgia which crowded on the Creeks, or passed around 
them to the east and west banks of the Lower Mississippi 
River. 

The Northern States began to furnish large numbers of 
emigrants to the West after the war of independence, but the 
stream did not become very noticeable until Ohio was thrown 
open, in 1788. New England, New York and New Jersey 



322 ORIGIN AND DIFFEKENCES OF POPULATION. 

with Peiinsjlvania furnished most of the early and later set- 
tlers to the Northwest territory. Southern Indiana and 
nearly half of Illinois were occupied, in large part, by emi- 
grants from Kentucky and Tennessee. In later times the 
bulk of emigration to slave States, or Territories expected to 
become such, was from regions south of Mason and Dixon's 
line; while the free States and Territories of the Yalley were 
chiefly filled up from free States further east. Thus there was 
really threatened a radical difference of civilization in the 
North and the South, and it has often been maintained that it 
already existed. Economic and social affairs in the two sections 
certainly sought similar ends by widely different means, but 
the qualities of race were the same in each. In both, hardy 
enterprise was guided by intelligence, and the special advan- 
tages of the northern and sonthern basin were developed with 
great zeal and effect. The Kevolutionary War demonstrated 
that a new race— the Anglo-American — had come into exist- 
ence, and that the people of all the thirteen colonies belonged 
to it. 

But multitudes not of American birth became immigrants 
to the Valley. The largest and most notable part of these 
were from the British Isles. In the^ early years of the 
present century the larger number of those who located in the 
West were from England and Scotland, Ireland furnishing 
a large emigration later. These last became laborers in the 
towns and on the public works, or located in newer States and 
Territories. Scattering widely, they were usually surrounded 
by Americans. 

The emigrants from Great Britain, speaking one lan- 
guage, raised under the general influence of common 
ideas and similar institutions, with the same fundamental 
tendencies of character and aspiration, very soon received 
whatever was peculiar to the land of their adoption. British 
thought and British principles were imported by the first 
Atlantic colonies and became the foundation of American 



THE MISSISSU'PI VALLEY. 323 

institutions. It was comparatively easy for the later arrivals 
to grasp the meaning of the transfoi'inations through whi(;h 
these thoughts and principles had passed and they readily 
became thorough Americans. If this were the case oidy with 
the more thoughtful of the first generation, in matters of 
custom and sympathy, it was sure to be true of all the 
descendants. 

It has been demonstrated by history, that races radically 
different mingle completely with difficulty. The laws of 
heredity operate against intimate sympathy and harmony ; 
common ideas and aims, common interests and action, need 
to operate, often through many generations, before strong 
peculiarities and antagonisms can be overcome. This was a 
comparatively slight difficulty with the English and Scotch, 
and even the Celtic inhabitants of Ireland and Wales, for 
Anglo-Saxon blood had circulated among them, and English 
rule, for many hundred years, had been at work assimilating 
them to English thought and custom and multiplying inti- 
mate relationships. Neitlier was it very difficult to bring 
other nationalities of Northern and Central Europe to a sim- 
ilar comprehension and sympathy. Modern Europe has 
borne the character of one great commonwealth in many 
ways, for at least twelve hundred years. The common re- 
ligious bond, common learned languages, alternate con(]^uests, 
diplomatic, business and social relations, have tended more 
and more strongly to familiarize them with each other, and 
especially in the last five hundred years. 

But behind this intercourse lies the important fact that the 
nations inclined to emigrate to America were mostly, from a 
thousand to fifteen hundred years ago, of one race — the Teu- 
tonic — from which the Anglo-Saxon (and later the Norman) 
conquerors of England sprung. A broad and important base 
of common character, and many features of common develop- 
ment, made it easy to harmonize them, after a little time, with 
Anglo-American ideas and ways. Many Germans, Swedes 



324 CHARACTEK OF EUROPEAN IMMIU HANTS. 

and French Huguenots — who were, in considerable part, of 
Norman blood, and inclined by powerful religious sympathies 
toward protestant America — were among the earlier settlers 
who took an earnest part in establishing the Republic. There 
was a considerable stream flowing to the colonies from north- 
ern and central Europe from the first, and it grew constantly 
larger as the States consolidated into a strong and free Federal 
Union, which furnished the worhi with a new and higher idea 
of political liberty. Many came for political reasons, full of 
eager sympathy for free institutions, and many to improve the 
opportunity to raise themselves and their families to the com- 
fort or opulence which the rich and cheap lands of America 
promised to all industrious settlers. All readily fell into line 
with native Americans, and fully appreciated the larger 
political and industrial opportunities here freely offered them. 
Thus, no important element of discord was introduced by the 
large streams of immigration from Europe directly to the 
Yalley. 

The French of the southeast were considerable in numbers 
at the beginning of the century — from 30,000 to 40,000 — but 
the Franks, who conquered Roman Gaul (the present France) 
and gave it their name, were a German tribe and they had a 
later infusion of Teutonic blood through the Normans. They 
were flexible and intelligent by race, and soon heartily sym- 
pathized with the somewhat radical and pronounced theories 
on which the Revolutionary leaders had rested the structure 
of the Union. They were very soon, when once incorporated 
in the Republic, most hearty and useful citizens. They had 
long been in the Valley, and in business relations with Anglo- 
Americans for thirty years. They became a valuable element 
in building up the southwest. Comparatively few of the 
French came directly from Europe with the later stream of 
immigration. In the upper Valley they were enterprising 
fur dealers or lived a quiet, careless, joyful life as small farm- 
ers, hunters and '' voyageurs " or forest guides. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PIOiVEKKS OK KENTUCKY AND TENNESSEE. 

Kentucky, much of Tennessee, and the territory lying im- 
mediately north of the Ohio River, had long ceased to be, if 
they had ever really been, the immediate and permanent abode 
of the Red Men. It was the debatable land, the hunting 
aTid battle ground eipially of the nortliern and southern tribes. 
On the hills and along tlie streams of this delightful forest 
they were sure to meet with abundance of game, animal or 
human. In settling here, the white man was certain to be 
assailed as an intruding enemy by all the tribes. From the 
south, and north, and west, they would suddenly skulk upon 
him, strike a quick, iierce blow and hastily retire. Judo-ino- 
him again oft his guard, they were ready for a fresh 
attack. 

But danger had no terrors for the backwoodsmen who first 
crossed the eastern watershed of the Valley. They rather 
courted it and gloried in it. It furnished an agreeable excite- 
ment and stimulus to daily life, otherwise somewhat monoto- 
nous. Although too civilized and careful of their wives and 
children, too eager to gather around them the comforts of 
eastern communities, to seek it as the business of life, they 
had not lived in and roved through the wilderness from boy- 
hood without catching more or less of the features of the wild 
man's character. This was often a mischievous spark to the 
tinder of the Indian's nature, who enjoyed the contest with a 
worthy antagonist, whose bravery and skill he admired, some 
of whose conveniences he coveted, and whose permanent 
presence and scornful rule were bitterness and gall to him. 
Thus he alternately made peace and war, in utter defiance of 
/'.on'^istency. until his spirit was broken by the fall of Tecumseh, 

335 



326 THE MENTAL AND PHYSICxiL STAMIN^A OF PIONEERS. 

and tlie destruction of the hostile Creeks during the war 
closing in 1815. 

Though it was a single phase of experience among the pion- 
eers, lasting scarcely more than twenty years in any single 
region, it produced a deep and permanent impression on the 
character of the whole Yalley. Cut off from the hope of aid 
in an emergency by the hundreds of miles of forest and moun- 
tain that lay between them and eastern population, they stood 
lirm, trusting only in themselves for help. This self-reliance, 
constantly exercised through the whole of a vigorous manhood, 
and wrought into the character and habits of the young, devel- 
oped a singular mental robustness and confidence. Success 
could not have failed them had the difficulties been ten times 
as great; but the dangers were great and constant enough to 
call forth their best energies, and the success sufficiently diffi- 
cult of attainment to give it the highest value in their eyes 
and afford great self-satisfaction. 

The fame of the "• Long Knives " — so the settlers below the 
Ohio were called by the tribes — among the Indians was great. 
A stirring life in a fine climate, and comparatively few of the 
vices of savage or civilized life to diminish physical vigor, pro- 
duced a tall, large framed and muscular race. The body and 
the mind were fairly matched. The red man could admire 
strength, subtlety and courage as well as the civilized white. 
They sometimes tried to adopt the white " braves " into their 
tribes. Daniel Boone was a fine specimen of all the pioneer 
virtues, and though his rifle was very fatal among their war 
parties they were very anxious to capture and " tame " so dis- 
tinguished a white warrior. Calm, cool and extremely skillful 
as a hunter and fighter, he was free from the darker passions 
of malice and hatred. Caught for once, with twenty-seven 
companions, at his dinner, by a large party of Indians, resist- 
ance was useless. The Indians spared all the party for his 
sake, hoping he W'Ould consent to adoption into their tribe. 
He was treated with great courtesy and remained with them 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALI,EY. 327 

quietly, to insure the safety of his friends, until he learned 
that his own fort was soon to be assailed by an Indian expe- 
dition, when he stole awa_y alone, put Boonesborough in order 
for resistance, and successfully defended it. Though promi- 
nent for bold and daring deeds he was only one among mul- 
titudes. 

This undaunted courage and confidence, which no danger 
could subdue, which found an attraction and romance in appal- 
ling adventures, has often been displayed by communities who 
made war a business, but probably was never before joined so 
completely to the habits and virtues of civilization. Their 
chief interest was still not war and adventure, but settlement 
and cultivation. They were simple farmers, endowed with 
warlike virtues. The warrior and the adventurer in them did 
not expel the quiet plodding virtues of civilized life. Those 
simply came forward, at need, to protect and cherish these. 
It was an admirable basis of character and habit on which 
to build free institutions. 

A.11 Indian claims — supposed to be real or just — to Kentucky 
and much of Tennessee, had been purchased from the various 
claimants, but the Cherokees and Creeks were annoyed l)y the 
growing strength of the settlements on their borders, and indi- 
vidual white aggression or violence often gave them the pre- 
text for war they wanted, while all the tribes north of the Ohio 
considered Kentucky as their hunting ground, and could not 
resist the passion for keeping up their immemorial custom of 
roaming and fighting there ; and until the two became States, 
with a large population, whom it was ruin for the Indians to 
attack, the settlers were required to defend themselves. The 
backwoodsmen of the Eastern States continued to wander 
along the bridle paths that crossed the mountains, unawed by 
the almost incessant Indian war with all its butcherings and 
destruction. The valleys of Eastern and Middle Tennessee, 
the slopes and bottoms of delightful Kentucky — which rested 
its head on the mountains, bathed its limbs in the Ohii). and 



328 THE MODEST AMBITION OF EARLY PIONEERS. 

its feet in the Mississippi — were irresistibly attractive to tliem 
when compared with the harsh and sterile regions on the east- 
ern slope of the mountains; for even the mountainous parts 
of the Valley have a softer, more fertile and inviting aspect 
than elsewhere. 

Thev came, therefore, not to fight but to find farms — for 
which they were not at all unwilling to fight if that was the 
price of them. Thus, while the inhabitants on the Atlantic 
were maintaining against England the native " Rights of 
Englishmen," and, having secured them by inde])endence, 
were organizing institutions to render their possession of them 
complete and permanent, the often rude and rough but noble 
and true-hearted pioneers of the backwoods were extending 
the field of liberty and settling the foundations of the repub- 
lic in the Yalley. So far as they could, the English and the 
Spaniards confronted them and cli^efly through the Indians. 

But liberty and the welfare of the future were safe in their 
hands. Their ambition could not be persuaded to seek for 
anything but the farmers' modest competence and for a free and 
well ordered goyernment of their own. These untaught men 
of the woods were as sound at heart and in judgment, and as 
moderate and wise in general conduct, as Washington and his 
fellow patriots of Virginia and Massachusetts. They were 
not, indeed, all from the frontiers of the Atlantic States, and 
most of them had the rudiments of learning. They would 
have been respectable and prominent in any community where 
good sense and weight of character had influence ; but as a 
whole they were unpolished and very moderately educated in 
books and the refinements of life. They were, still, the solid 
material out of which the durable structure of the American 
Union was built. They had the capacities of statesmen and 
all the best instincts of civilization. Culture and polish 
would come with opportunity and prosperity; but none of 
the demands of the time failed to be fairly met. 

During this period of fighting, domestic and social life 



THE MISSISSIPPI VAI.LKV. 0'2'.) 

assumed the simplest forms well coueeivable in a civilized 
community. Luxuries and elegancies of furniture or dress 
and conveniences for labor did not abound, even at the East, 
in those times. Only the wealthy could procure them from 
Euro])e. Great simplicity prevailed on the borders of the 
eastern settlements; nothing but the absolutely indispensable 
could be carried over the mountains. A gun, an axe, an 
augur, an iron or eartlien vessel or two for the purposes of 
cooking, with a very limited quantity of home-made clothing, 
formed the outfit of the emigrant, with an occasional drawing 
knife and other instrument or two for coopering. With these 
the house and its furniture were constructed, the forests cut 
down, game was procured, and the Indians conquered. Suitable 
garments were made of the dressed skins of animals, of flax, 
and, after a time, of wool and cotton. Great industry and 
ingenuity surrounded them, very soon, with rude, but sub- 
stantial, comfort. 

The virgin soil furnished them grain and vegetables in 
plenty; the woods and streams supplied them with the ten- 
derest, most nourishing meats ; and as the herds multiplied 
the finest products of the dairy abounded. Their tables were 
supplied with the rarest steaks, the most delicate flsli, the most 
nourishing bread, the best butter, with honey, maple sugar and 
wild fruit. They had almost no market for their surplus, and 
hospitality was scarcely a virtue, it was attended with so little 
cost. Social qualities naturally flourished in this abundance, 
isolation, and community of danger. Similar conditions, con- 
tinuing far into our century, made this a marked feature of 
western, and especially southern, life. 

To all this bodily comfort add comparative freedom from 
the ambitions and small cares and anxieties of an artificial 
society, and the high spirit produced by danger and difficulty 
successfully overcome— a confident trust in their al^ility to 
meet every emergency and master every situation — and we 
have before us one of the prominent features of early life in 



3oO A LEADING TYPE OF WESTERN CHARACTER. 

the Valley, which gave it a manly and generous tone for all 
time to come. When this simple and genial freedom gave 
place, under rapidly increasing wealth and immigration, to the 
social forms and culture of the East, the mental tone and bent 
had been given and the force and vigor of character which lay 
behind them enabled the Valley to dominate all the opposite 
mental elements and social habitudes with which it came in 
contact. Not that it excluded them, but modified them by its 
persistence and superior vigor. It required the eastern citi- 
zen to become acclimated in thought and manner. A life so 
simple and natural rendered the artifices and shows of an old 
society odious to it. The self-confident, frank, and open temper 
which had grown so strong scorned and ridiculed the shallow 
pretence and artificial gloss that endeavored to impose on its 
presumed simplicity and ignorance. What was really sound 
and true it recognized and honored, and proved itself, in the 
end, capable of a high culture and a bright polish. 

This energetic element had grown up, concentrated and 
strong, to large j^roportions in Kentucky and Tennessee 
before the prairie regions were open to settlement, and when 
that time arrived those two States sent out multitudes to the 
newer regions .and occupied so much of the Valley as to 
impress their peculiarities on its whole future. These pecu- 
liarities were also strengthened by the general difticulties of 
a settlement of the interior which had no adequate market 
for nearly a generation after 1815. 

The force of this peculiar development, which was raised to 
eminence by the great difiiculties overcome so completely, 
naturally tended to exaggeration, and this was increased by 
the growth of the slaveholding system. With prosperity came 
wealth, and the whites became gentlemen of leisure as the 
close of the pioneer period of hardship and difficulty devolved 
most of the manual labor on the colored servants. The young 
men were not so well prepared to make the best use of leisure 
and, in many cases, the self-confident assurance of the fathers 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 331 

became vices more or less offensive in the sons. This, liow- 
ever was a temporary phase which good sense and education 
gradually restrained. The poorer and less fortunate in 
jnental balance became, often, the noisy and fearless blackleg 
and gambler of the river town and the frontier, and gave an 
air of rudeness and violence to far-western life and an unde- 
served ill-fame, to a certain extent, and among superficial 
observers, to a noble race. Exaggerated virtues become vices 
everywhere and " tares " grow among the " wheat " in every 
society. The openness and freedom of the Yalley gave this 
class special prominence for a time, but the evil was corrected 
with the course of years, and the sooner that the virtues from 
which it was a temporary aberration, were full of soundness 
and vigor, and, exerting a free and quiet influence, at length 
balanced and regulated society by their weight. 

Kentuckians and Tennesseeans scattered through all the 
new States and Territories. They were even more " irrepres- 
sible " than the ideal Yankee, for their buoyant assurance 
carried them, everywhere, to the surface. They furnished to 
the country its typical orator in Henry Clay, many of its 
weighty statesmen, of its great generals, and its president 
most beloved and revered after Washington. These oldest 
Valley States furnished many of its leading forces to the 
country and impressed their character ineffaceably on its 
whole history. 



CHAPTER XYII. 



NEW ENGLAND IN THE WEST. 



The settlers of Ohio during the early period were chiefly 
from New England. Commencing later and with previous 
careful organization, which was immediately placed under the 
protection of a Territorial Government supported by United 
States troops, traveling over a route that had long formed a 
military road, and confining themselves, at fiirst, to compact 
settlements near the Ohio, they were able to surround them- 
selves with many of their accustomed comforts and conveni- 
ences, and to continue, in the depths of the continent, very 
much the same manner of life they had led in New England. 
A fort, comfortable cottages, accommodations for schools and 
religious services, were already prepared when the first fami- 
lies arrived. Twelve years had passed since the Declaration 
of Independence had been issued, and republican ideas had 
taken definite form, in the previous year, in the " Ordinance " 
and in the Constitution of the United States. A large popu- 
lation had already firmly established civilization south of the 
Ohio, the Indians were, in a few years, to be pushed out of 
their immediate neighborhood and awed into tolerable quiet 
by a final defeat. 

The conditions, therefore, for the Ohio settlements, were 
very different from those that attended the early growth of 
Kentucky and Tennessee. While the discipline of these ear- 
liest pioneers had tended to the development of a courageous 
temper — a bold, confident and outspoken independence of 
feeling — the later New England settlers were able to devote 
themselves, in comparative security and comfort, t(.) the work- 
ing out of the new ideas of the time. It was a different stock 
and had here a different discipline. At first it was New Eng- 

333 



CIIAKACTEK OF PIONEERS FROM >fE\V ENOI.AM). 333 

land transferred, with all its habits and peculiai* institutions, 
to the woods, carefully upheld and nourished by previous or- 
ganization and constant military protection ; but the boundless 
space about it, the freedom of the woods, and the rudeness of 
frontier life, dissipated much of the strength and controlling 
force of organization, threw the individnal upon himself, and 
left the fundamental (j[uality of the Xew England mind to a 
free development. The German and Quaker elements of Penn- 
sylvania mingled with it somewhat and enlarged its mental 
horizon by intimate contact with new ideas and habits. What- 
ever, therefore, of strictness and narrowness might attach to 
the descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers, in Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, was modified and partially removed here by new 
suggestions and both mental and social freedom from restraint, 
even of public opinion. 

After the first six or seven years of danger from Indian 
attack, during which military organization was kept up, and 
adventurous scouts and sentinels became skillful in the wild 
warfare of the woods, and communicated to the new settlers 
in general a little of the boldness and confidence of Kentuck- 
ians, they settled down to the individual toil and struggle 
unavoidable in laying the first foundations of a great com- 
monwealth in a vast region wholly new. During this period 
the real fundamental character of these people developed 
freely. The Xew Englander adapted himself to the changed 
conditions and was better prepared to organize a new State 
than if wholly fresh from an eastern community. In 
twelve years from the day the first house was built in 
Marietta, the Northwest Territory had forty-five thousand 
inhabitants ; and when the war of 1812 broke out there 
were two hundred and fifty thousand souls breathing the 
free healthy air of the woods of Ohio. All these soon 
caught the spirit and tendency of the first settlers, weve sub- 
jected to the rough discipline of pioneer life, and built up a 
newer, fresher and more natural New England in the West. 



334 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

New England society and institutions had been formed on 
English models before the liberal and expansive ideas of a 
later time had taken form. Their reconstruction here, com- 
pleted their return to nature. The Revolutionary era had 
passed and a new departure had been taken. Laborious and 
simple habits and warm sympathy between all classes, begotten 
by the community of poverty and struggle of pioneer life, 
freed them from prejudice. Consequently* the First Principles 
of political and social science, enunciated in the Declaration 
of Independence, were more fully incorporated into the 
thought, habits and institutions of the Northwest Territory, 
and grew with lusty vigor in the healthy industry and quiet 
of the woods and prairies. Thorough republican principles 
had a certain degree of resistance to meet and overcome in 
the East from other forms of thought, and habits inherited 
from England, before they could be perfectly embodied. In 
the West the people were, at first, widely scattered and society 
was very much broken up by the extensive spread of pioneer 
settlement. Mind and habit were left free, for a time, to ex- 
pand under the influence of the new ideas, and the people were 
then reassembled to form a new body politic, and remodel 
institutions under the freest and most natural forms. 

Of all Anglo-Saxons the people of New England were the 
most orderly, the most logical in thought, and the most per- 
sistent in applying their mental conclusions to practical life. 
The mental capacity was shared by the Yirginians— who stand 
as representatives of the Southern colonies as the ])eople of 
Massachusetts do of the Northern. In fact, the Virginians 
possessed the quickness and vividness of conception to be seen 
in the French, and had the high honor to give the first and 
fullest expression to the thought and aspiration of all the 
colonies in the Declaration of Independence, as well as to 
furnish the most typical patriots and statesmen of the Repub- 
lic in Washington and Jefferson; but they had not the prac- 
tical tenacity and logical consistency of the New Englander. 



THE LOSS AND GAIN OF THE YANKEE IN THE WEST. 3H5 

They tolenited slavery and retained many English forms and 
habits not in harmony with the new growth. They had the 
misfortune to introduce forced labor into Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, and the noble and simple-hearted freemen there wanted 
the mental clearness and decision to divest themselves of it 
when first acting constitutionally. The New Englander in 
the West acquired a more liberal logic, but it did not cease to 
be just and practical. He laid the foundations of the great 
Nortlnvest — the most ])rosperous, free, and powerful region 
in the world. 

New Englanders have always highly esteemed their own 
special institutions and peculiarities — which is very natural. 
With their usual forethought they proposed to organize their 
settlements so carefully that the savor and the vigor of New 
Eno-land life and customs should be transferred to the West. 
Marietta and its companion settlements were, therefore, ar- 
ranged in the East, with orderly precision. The township 
officers were provided; the territorial organization began to 
operate simultaneously, and the East seemed transferred in 
all its completeness and peculiarities to the West. This 
attempt, however, w^as a failure, for the settlements as a whole, 
because they could not be kept compact. 

Association lost its force for the time, the community be- 
came resolved into its individual components, who spread far 
and wide through the wilderness, relying on theijiselves almost 
entirely for a new start in life. The old German instinct of 
individualism reasserted itself with a greater emphasis than 
it had ever displayed in England or on the Atlantic coast. 
Society resolved itself into its original elements in the early 
and middle periods of settlement in the Yalley more thor- 
oughly than this race had known before since it emerged 
from the primitive barbarism where the individual was 
nearly everything and social force almost nothing. 

But, in this scattering of the settlers, they carried all the 
elements of civilization with them, and reorganization at once 



336 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

commenced on a base moi'e favorable to tree action. The 
individual made more room around himself, so to speak, and 
the social and political structures ]-esulting no longer ham- 
pered him at any point. He could put forth his whole 
strength, and, as he was as fully penetrated with a sense of the 
advantages of association and order as any European, or citizen 
of the Atlantic States, he inclined to reconstruct with all 
necessary thoroughness and solidity. Thus the institutions 
of the Valley proved, in the end, to be more liberal as to the 
individual, and equally vigorous and decisive in action. The 
ideal of freedom and strength in union was more nearly 
approached in the West than in the East. As settlement 
extended and these tendencies revealed themselves, the various 
restrictions to popular suffrage that had obtained in the 
Atlantic States were abandoned in the Valley. Their exam- 
ple proved contagious and extended back to the East. So, in 
a thousand ways, the Valley proved to be a liberalizing force 
in the country. 

The careful attention of the intelligent leaders of settlement 
in the x^orthwest Territory was at once given to education; 
but adequate provision for it was attainable, at lirst, only in 
the towns and more populous settlements. The people spread 
over a vast region, the larger part of them were farmers, and 
more attention was paid to securing the best land, after danger 
from the Indians ceased, than to any other point. We see 
two hundred and lifty thousand people thinly sprinkled over 
much of the State of Ohio in the first twenty -five years fol- 
lowing the commencement of settlement. Then the prairie 
sections of the West were opened, the northern parts of the 
State were safe, and there was much migration to those regions. 
The solitude of the woods and thinly settled prairies had be- 
come attractive to some; the desire for change and to secure 
the best lands of new regions inspired others: so that, some- 
times, by repeated removals, families were formed and passed 
into the second or third generation in want of all the oppor- 
tunities of education and social culture. 



AN IMPKOVEMENT ON THE NEW ENGLAND TYPE. 337 

But, notwithstanding isolation and hardship, and though 
the surface of their life became rude and rough, the real New 
England type did not deteriorate. The wild growth was a 
healthy one; it was solid and firm. Western youth, if almost 
ignorant of books and of the habits of good society of the 
older regions, were bold, inquisitive and pushing; well versed 
in popular politics, and inclined to pursue their aims with a 
vigor that commonly secured success. The thoughtfulness, 
ingenuity and persistence of the Yankee were not lost. They 
acquired heartiness, independence and force, and kept up the 
advance in a definite direction, as a whole. They were ready 
to make sacrifices for public improvements, to promote edu- 
cation, and were extremely thrifty in the conduct of their 
private affairs. 

The New Englander lost in the West the European peculiar- 
ities of thought and habit which, though useful in some ways, 
cramped and limited him in others. Social distinctions, polit- 
ical and other theories, a thousand modes of thouglit and 
habits of life inherited from an old and imperfect civilization 
which had grown out of cii'cumstances long since passed away, 
but which left their impress on later life, were preserved on 
the Atlantic Slope by institutions originally cast in a Euro- 
pean mould and preserved by commercial, social and literary 
relations across the ocean. To develop the full strength and 
peculiarities suited to the time and place of a new class of 
men and of ideas, to render the new nation truly American or 
Continental, this western discipline was greatly needed. The 
new isolation and the opportunity iofor(jet~\\\% different inter- 
ests and aims of this new and vast interior world — recast the 
New Englander as they had recast the Virginian. Without 
losing his excellencies, he gained by girding himself more 
fully to a new career — gained in breadth and depth, even as 
his new horizon was more expanded and his soil and resources 
were deeper and richer. 

lie lost in sectional feeling, which is necessarily too limited, 
22 



338 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and gained — bj contact with new and larger facts, and asso- 
ciation with people of other regions and other nationalities 
on equal terms — the power of judging more freely and justly 
and in a larger sense. He became less a New Englander and 
more an American. The new boldness and force of independ- 
ence the western people acquired under their long apprentice- 
ship to solitude, hardship and difficulty fitted them to exert a 
controlling influence on new comers into the Yalley whom they 
constrained to become mentally and socially acclimated., even 
as they must needs become physically. The intelligent, the 
cultured and the prejudiced from old communities, however 
strong-willed, must learn to clothe their thoughts and conduct 
in western style to secure influence, and thus the peculiar 
tone acquired in this region dominated all the vast multitudes 
of immigrants from other States and from Europe. They 
received, however, as well as gave, and were modified and 
greatly ini])roved by all the solid worth and refinement that 
had matured elsewhere; but they selected what was appropri- 
ate and suppressed what they deemed unfitting. 

The later New Englander usually brought to the Yalley 
methodical business habits, a good education, the polish of an 
old and progressiv-e society, and all these he imparted to the 
aspiring settlers of the backwoods and lonely prairies. He 
found an opportunity to display all the genuine power that 
was in him, on a broad field, and received many suggestions 
of value that would not have occurred to him in a narrower 
one. The West, as every new country, was merciless to shams 
but most kindly toward all that was true and valuable. Some- 
what against its will, the East has felt the influence of the 
West, in many ways, and been benefited by it. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE SOUTHERN PLANTER IN THE VALLEY. 

The Southern Valley east of the Mississippi was settled to 
a small extent along the Gulf coast by the Spanish, French 
and English, previous to the American Revolution. Com- 
paratively few Spaniards or Frenchmen remained, however, 
after the English took possession of it, and, exce]:)t to the 
trading towns on the Gulf, and the east bank of the Missis- 
sippi, there was no extensive immigration before the severe 
chastisement of the Creeks by Gen. Jackson, in 1S14. The 
Tennessee settlements which had extended below the bend of 
the Tennessee River numbered several thousand at the close 
of that war. Northwestern and southwestern Mississippi had 
many thousand settlers by that time. Many were from Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas. Others were 
descended from English, Scotch and Irish parents; some were 
from Northern colonies or States, and some from Louisiana. 
The forced labor system had been introduced by Spanish, 
French, English, the colonies and the States alike. 

The hardships and difficulties which had been experienced 
in the upper Valley were comparatively little known here 
except in the settlements near the Tennessee River, and in 
later times in neighboring localities. Elsewhere the settle- 
ments were along the rivers; there was a ready market for 
agricultural products, and the special staples raised only 
there had a sure and profitable sale. Many of the settlers 
were well supplied with colored labor, from the first, and 
soon all were so. There was much more of comfort and no 
long period of helpless poverty for those who required money 
to pay for farms and improvements. 

The northern part of Alabama was in the Valley of the 

339 



340 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Tennessee and had no water ontlet except by that river to the 
Ohio and Mississippi, so that it lay about four hundred miles 
farther from markets than Pittsburgh. It was 1,600 miles 
to New Orleans, by that route, though that part of xVlabama 
is but 500 miles from the same place in a direct line. This, 
however, was but a small section of tlie state ; the larger part 
had access to the Gulf markets by its river system. 

Pioneer life, for the multitudes in the early periods, except 
in the Tennessee Valley, w\as less embarrassed wnth difficulty, 
either in reaching the objective point for settlement or in pro- 
ducing a comfortable income, than the upper Valley. More 
conveniences, implements and laborers could be introduced at 
the first, or very soon accumulated. The first settlers east 
of the Mississippi were extremely various in origin, being 
adventurous people from the various parts of the colonies — 
or later, the States and Territories — and some immigrants 
direct from Europe. The original number, however, was not 
very large. The larger part of the settlers after the close of 
the war, in 1815, were from Georgia, the Carolinas and Vir- 
ginia; many were people of wealth, character and position, 
many were young and enterprising men of good families and 
education ; while many more, perhaps, were the struggling 
poor who sought to retrieve their fortunes in a productive new 
region. 

Prosperity was great and tolerably general, for cotton was 
in great demand and brought a high price for some years, 
and those who could profit by the opportunity soon acquired 
wealth. It is stated that many plantations produced a reve- 
nue of $-10,000 per annum, in those times, and smaller estates 
in the same proportion. This extraordinary condition of 
things did not last long, but still, southern staples were al- 
ways ready of sale and extremely profitable to raise. The 
employment of colored labor and the great advantage secured 
by the large over the small cultivators by the facility of in- 
creasing the area of their lands, very soon produced great dif- 



PIONEEK IJFE IN THE SOUTIIEKN VALLEY. 341 

ferences in fortune, and ultimately two agricultural classes — the 
planters and the poor whites. The large plantations tended 
to increase, and the smaller to diminish. Capital must be 
invested in labor to secure it in abundance. 

This system tended to make profitable agriculture a kind of 
monopoly of the wealthy and to raise a comjjaratively small 
class to an eminence resembling a European aristocracy. The 
planters ruled the extreme South l)y their ownership of labor, 
by the possession of capital, by their social position and their 
intelligence. In the early periods, while settlement was in 
active progress, this was only a tendency. It ripened fast 
after 1840 and became strongly defined before 1860. 

This was in strong contrast with the upper Yalley, where 
tlie general tendency was to equalize property, as far as indi- 
vidual differences of capacity and energy would permit. There, 
the labor system w^as bnilt on the same race that controlled 
politics, and there was no tendency of agricultural property 
and resources to accumulate in a few hands, but rather the 
contrary. The variety of occupations in the North also helped 
to maintain greater equality among the people. The central 
Talley, or border slave States, formed a medium between the 
two, the tendency being strongly to the southern system of 
grading the classes, tliough it was partly counteracted by agri- 
cultural conditions similar to those north of the Ohio. 

Viewed from the industrial point this southern system was, 
temporarily, an important advantage, since it rapidly devel- 
oped enormous wealth, from the attention given to the culti- 
vation of southern staples — and especially cotton, which was 
in great demand in Europe — stimulated the commerce of the 
•country by furnishing a large part of its most profitable exports, 
and greatly aided to maintain the balance of trade with the 
manufacturing nations of Europe; but it was a disadvantage 
in the long run since it deteriorated the fortunes of the mass 
of the southern people. The poorer whites had few resources, 
compared with the poor of the North, wherewith to improve 



342 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

their condition, and fell to a continually greater extent, finan- 
cially and mentally, under tlie control of the class which had 
so much the advantage of them in wealth and culture, and the 
influences which spring from them. The resources of the 
South were only partly developed, and a great loss to the gen- 
eral community was sustained, while various minor evils grad- 
ually came to the surface and increased in magnitude. Among 
the most important of these was the mental stagnation of the 
lower grade of whites and the unintelligent character of lahor. 
It ultimately seemed evident that no region where labor was 
merely mechanical, where it had no mental stimulus or pro- 
gressiveness in skill, could comj^ete with regions where the 
contrary ruled, Resources are developed from the mental 
force that is put into the work, and the intelligence that con- 
trols the muscles of the laborer must, ordinarily, to produce 
eminent results, dwell in the same body. Oversight and direc- 
tion, however intelligent, can not produce results in compari- 
son with intelligent labor. Unintelligent labor is not flexible, 
not at ready command when changes are desirable, and imme- 
diate results are less with the same caj)ital and numbers. For 
a moderate period this is not particularly observable, but in 
the end the difference is very great. 

Yet, the loss in this direction was partly balanced by the 
gain in another. The depression of the two classes operated 
to raise the third. Among the immigrants to the Valley in 
the South were many gentlemen of the class that did such 
honorable service to liberty during the Kevolution. Many 
were descended from the chivalry of England and France, 
where the blood of their forefatliers had been " gentle " back 
to the dim twilight of modern European history. Many of the 
French in Louisiana were descended from the higher classes of 
the Mother Country ; and the settlers from the southern Atlan- 
tic States included many whose hereditary endowments em- 
braced all the advantages and tendencies of distinguished 
origin. They were gentlemen by birth,* by position such as- 



FINE QUALITIES OF THE SOUTIIERX I'LANTER. 343 

wealth and culture can give, and l)y tlie fine instincts and 
native dignity and intelligence which are the only excuses 
for an aristocracy. 

To such natural leaders were joined the enterjjrising and 
successful who made e(|ual fortunes by ability and the special 
favor of circumstances. Tiiese very often included persons 
who were coarse and rude, not very susceptible of rehnement, 
tliougli, for the most part, they caught, more or less, the spirit 
of the society to which success introduced them. After the 
beginnings were past and large incomes were secured, these 
classes usually committed tlie care of labor on their estates to 
overseers and had abundant leisure; the education of their 
families was usually cared for without regard to expense ; 
society became increasingly refined. The fervent climate 
which stimulated the generous qualities of the race, the free- 
dom from care, tlie large incomes and the isolation of country 
life on large ])lantations, gave a rare geniality and compass to 
social qualities and furnished the singular spectacle in the 
newly broken wilderness and the mixed population, hastily 
and recently collected from many regions, of a society of 
which the oldest countries might be proud. 

This class, when fairly developed and dominant in the South, 
contained a few hundred thousand among several millions of 
whites; but their mental influence was deeply felt through- 
out the Union. They possessed many most agreeable and 
valuable qualities. Generous and amiable, with an assured 
position and abundant incomes, they were rarely severe mas- 
ters and the kindness and sympathy of the patriarchal relation 
was much more frequently represented Ijetween the master and 
servant than the outside world was inclined to believe. With 
some painful exceptions, gentleness, rather than severity, char- 
acterized the master. Pecuniary difficulty, which sometimes 
broke up life-long relations, the occasional tyranny of paid 
overseers, or the rise to w^ealth of coarse and violent men — all 
which must be considered exceptions to the rule — were the 



344 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEV. 

common causes of abuse of power and oppression of the 
helpless. The absoluteness and fixity of the relation usually 
rendered the master the more ready in kindness. 

The servant was of the gentlest of races, apparently want- 
ing in the mental robustness and force required for strong 
self-assertion, revering the master and his race as superior 
beings, with an overflowing abundance of light-heartedness 
and the emotional nature that readily seeks expression in 
strono^ attachment. This race was but a few ofenerations 
removed from absolute barbarism, at the longest, and many 
had been born in it. The favorable influence of their white 
masters on them must now be conceded in comparing their 
conduct, during and after the civil war, with that of the same 
race under self-government in Hayti, or under English control 
after liberation in Jamaica. It can not be doubted that more 
happiness and less suffering reigned among the mass of South- 
ern slaves during servitude than after they became freed men. 
It is being tested whether or not they can, as a race, maintain 
with honor the character and dignity of citizens on their own 
resources. 'No trial can be considered complete until gen- 
.erations shall have displayed their tendencies and real capaci- 
ties. Character is of slow growth ; yet the commencement 
is full of promise. 

Perhaps the finest and most honorable character in which 
the Southern slaveholder appeared was in that of an Ameri- 
can citizen. Largely of aristocratic descent, habits and im- 
mediate surroundings, he proved an American and a republi- 
can of the most pronounced type in all that related to the white 
race. No class in the republic more forcibly advocated or 
applied the principles, constitutional and judicial, on wliich 
it was based. Leaving tlie colored man aside, he was in fullest 
sympathy with that which was most distinctively x\merican. 
The Constitutions of the Gulf States were even more liberal 
in admitting the elective principle to its fullest development 
than those of the New England States. The j^lanter had leisure 



THE PLANTER A TRUE AMERICAN. 345 

and ambition and threw himself, with French vivacity and 
Anglo-Saxon heartiness, into political life. The South long 
exerted a controlling influence on the politics of the country, 
and its general liberal development may testify that its influ- 
ence was not injurious. The people of the Southern Valley 
were of more purely American descent, the great flood of 
European immigration being chiefly dispersed over the free 
States of the upper basin. The instincts of the class and 
their course in all matters unconnected with slavery were, 
and are, an honor to the Anglo-American race. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS AS AMERICAN CITIZENS. 

The Colonies wliich, in 1776, declared their independence, 
and permanently established the Kepublic of the United States 
of America, had been more than one hundred and fifty years 
in reaching a total population of about three million. In 
1790 the population of tlie whole country was about 3,200,000 
whites and 700,000 blacks. The growth had been slow. The- 
population of New England in 1760 was not far from 400,000^ 
almost all of which was the increase of the twenty thousand 
Anglo-Saxons who emigrated from England between 1620 and 
1650. The larger part of the immigrants who formed the other 
colonies came from Europe previous to 1700, and had long been 
undergoing the process of transformation from Anglo-Saxons 
to Anglo-Americans. The emigrants from continental Europe 
were an inconsiderable number compared with those from the 
British Isles and proved themselves true Americans during 
the war. That contest and its results proved that a new race 
had commenced its career during colonial times. 

Previous to 1820 comparatively few foreigners found their 
way to the Yalley. Probably not more than 150,000 out of 
the 2,500,000 then inhabiting the Valley were of foreign birth, 
including the French of the Louisiana Purchase and the Span- 
ish of Florida. Accurate figures are not attainable, but that 
seems a fair estimate. After 1820 statistics of immigration 
were officially kept. From that year up to 1825 less than 
40,000 foreigners spread over the whole country. O f these not 
over 25,000 came to the AVest. From 1825 to 1830, including 
the former but not the latter year, something more than 90,000 
foreigners settled in the whole country. The population of 
the Yalley had increased about a million and a half, not over 

346 



FOKEIGN ELEMENTS AT DIFFERENT PERIODS. '.Ml 

100,000 of whicli could have been foreigners; the increase of 
foreigners to the increase of native Americans being us one 
to fifteen at the utmost, and of foi'eigners of recent im migra- 
tion to the whole population of the Vallej as one to forty. 

In 1840 the population of the Valley was about 6,700,000 — 
an increase in ten years of 2,700,000. In this time immigra- 
tion to the United States aggregated 540,000, of which perhaps 
half settled in the Yalley, the remainder locating in cities 
and manufactories, or laboring on public works in the East. 
Between 1840 and 1850 immigration to the United States 
from Europe rose to about 1,350,000. The Yalley had now 
over 10,000,000 inhabitants. The increase of 3,300,000 proba- 
bly included 800,000 foreigners, or nearly one fourth. Between 
1850 and 1860 more than two and a half million persons emi- 
grated from Europe to the United States. Of these perhaps 
1,500,000 settled in the Yalley, which had gained, in that time, 
more than 6,500,000 — the whole population being about 16,600,- 
000. Of the 5,500,000 foreign born inhabitants of the United 
States, in 1870, probably upwards of three fifths were in the 
Yalley. Of the 10,000,000 in the Yalley in 1850 much less 
than 1,500,000 were of foreign birth, and large numbers of 
these were of American education. Xearly two thirds of the 
whole, however, had immigrated within ten years. 

The early periods of settlement in the Yalley were given to 
the formation of a truly American character and spirit; the 
foreign element being too small to do more than expand their 
views by aiding the native Americans to comprehend liow 
things looked from other points of view than their own. 
Foreigners iiave always been too small a minority to exert 
much general control, even if the resolute spirit of native 
Americans, their intelligence and aggressiveness, had not 
marked them as the necessarily dominant race. 

There has always been a fear in the minds of thoughtful, 
but not fully instructed, patriots that the large numbers of 
foreigners, who so readily reached the position of citizens 



34S THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

under the naturalization laws, might do harm to the future 
of the republic. It seemed to them unlikely that the Anglo- 
American race would always be able to maintain the firm 
control over their institutions necessary to their excellence, 
with so large an element from abroad able to turn the scale 
by their votes at a critical time. In the midst of the great 
tide of immigration, soon after 1850, this apprehension was 
■embodied in a political party which undertook to exclude 
foreigners from official position; but it soon dissolved. Every 
agriculturist who emigrated from Europe was equivalent to 
a moderate capital invested in the country, speeding its 
progress by developing its resources. It was impolitic, finan- 
cially, to receive immigrants coldly and treat them with 
suspicion. To this was added the perception, partly from 
European history and partly from the observation and instinc- 
tive good sense of Americans, that foreigners who came as 
permanent settlers identified their interests with the home of 
their adoption. 

The crowded population of European states, the monopoly 
of wealth, influence and station by hereditary transmission, 
the difficulty for the lower classes of improving their future, 
the burden of taxation and of conscrijjtion into the vast 
armies there maintained, made them feel like prisoners un- 
bound and set free in America. Their first, and usually their 
only thought, fur a series of years, was to get them a home, 
to surround it with comfort, and to provide a future for their 
families. During these years they became familiarized with 
American life and institutions, their children grew up as 
Americans, became inibued with the teni])er and spirit of 
natives and were, usually, fully prepared to assume the 
duties of citizens when the burdens of mature life fell on 
them. 

America was so much an ideal country to their iniagijia- 
tions before they arrived, and the opportunities they found 
were really so great, that they adjusted themselves to Amer- 



THE TEUTONIC NATIONS EASILY AMERICANIZED. 349 

ican ideas very readily. Had tliey been required to assist in 
founding and shaping the form of institutions their want of 
experience and development must have had very unhappy 
results. But Americans, almost unassisted, had done this 
already; the work had become mature and all the tendencies 
settled before any large number of foreigners came. They 
were then too small in number to disturb the mighty current 
of American destiny as Anglo-Americans had settled it ; 
they could only be carried along with it and this was to a 
future so promising that they did not wnsh to interfere with 
it. The prospect was almost as bright as anything they could 
dream. The European peasant, who had nothing but his 
strong arm and his habits of labor, and who had known no 
prospect of anything in life but to labor incessantly for a 
mere pittance, while others were enriched by his toil, found 
here a chance to labor for himself, to secure a home and farm 
of his owm that should richly reward his patient industry ; 
he was an equal among the free; he could educate his children; 
if they had gifts of mind and ambition for honors and place 
they had an equal chance wntli others. It was impossible that 
they should not enter as heartily into the spirit spread like 
an atmosphere about them as the habits of their early lives 
would permit. Their children caught the strong impulses of 
a free society and grew up true Americans. Those who came 
wath education, or with proj^erty, found in them the means 
of entering on a new and high career of brilliant possibilities. 
Besides, the latent spirit of the Angles, the Saxons and Nor- 
mans, which the despotic and aristocratic governments of 
Europe had suppressed in their races for ages, now woke into 
life. The ancient relationship of life and blood told. The 
steady industry of the parents engaged the approval of the 
thrifty American farmers and the sympathies of ancient 
blood relationship awoke in the children. The branches of 
the old race, long separated, reunited easily. 

There was also a liberalizinof influence in immigration. 



350 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

IS'ations that live apart and often have, or think they have, 
contrary interests, on which wars are founded and miscon- 
ceptions arise, learn to think ill of each other. Patriotism re- 
quires them, they think, to hate other races in order to be true 
to their own. To live in close contact with foreigners, with 
the same evident interests, is to enlarge patriotism, to learn 
that virtue and worth are of no country or kindred. It is 
a lesson which, w^ell learned, elevates and ennobles a people, 
makes them high minded and just in international relations, 
and secures them respect, honor and much profit. 

This liberal appreciation was learned when numerous rep- 
resentatives of many nations mingled freely with Americans 
in relations such as to bring out all their virtues. The ideas, 
the habits, the mental tone and different mode of viewing the 
same subjects, brought out in amicable intercourse or public 
discussion, opened a wider mental field to the intelligent, ap- 
preciative American. The more numerous the various points 
from which the same thing is regarded the more completely 
just and accurate is the final judgment concerning it. The 
mental breadth of America gained by immigration. 

The circumstances were favorable for a fusion of the foreign 
qualities and for casting them in the native mould. Neigh- 
borhood, social and political life embraced all the various ele- 
ments ; there being no strong causes to maintain separation, and 
many to introduce intimate union, they mingled and brought 
a result differing in various ways from either of the constitu- 
ents combining. Where two or more races can so unite, on 
terms not too unequal, it is an advantage to both. The union 
of races has been one of the most important elements of prog- 
ress known to civilization. Physical and mental vigor are im- 
proved; the blood is made richer; thought is enlarged ; anew 
genius, or mental element, is produced. So the hardy, bold 
Northman gained by contact with the vivacity and light tem- 
per of France. His solid qualities took on a brilliant polish. 
Conquering Saxon England, both Saxons and Normans were 



NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS MODIFY EACH OTHER. 351 

biiproved by the contact, and development* in England was 
hastened. So the French in America have mingled with the 
citizens and improved the character of the downright, eager, 
business-like Anglo-Saxons; the Germans liave brought phys- 
ical stamina and mental equanimity, and the Irish quick blood 
and careless joviality. 

All these and other special characteristics of the several 
races meet and mutually modity each other in society and 
business, by intermarriage, and by various modes of contact. 
They give and take, or, at times, perhaps, neutralize each other 
in the mental chemistry of the product, and make the Anglo- 
American nation richer in aptitudes, better balanced in mind 
and action, broader and more just in judgment. This has 
been the evident tendency. The larger flow of immigration 
lias been comparatively recent, and the fusion, so far as much 
of it is concerned, is still very incomplete; but the process has 
l^een long in operation; it commenced with the first settle- 
ment of the colonies; it has been proceeding on a large scale 
since 1S20, and the result is fairly evident. The digestion 
of the Anglo-American body politic is strong; foreigners liave 
not endangered the Republic, have not upset public schools, 
liave not sought to raise up an aristocracy. Evils have oeen 
abundant but not as harmful or permanent as they seemed. 
Time will dispose of them all. 



CHAPTER XX. 

EDUCATIONAL BEGINNINGS IN THE VALLEY, 

A Republic is dependent, beyond any other form of govern- 
ment, on tlie intelligence of the people as a whole. The endur- 
ing excellence of its institutions, springing immediately from 
the people and constantly subject to their control and revi- 
sion, can not exceed the combined wisdom of the majority. 
Should that majority consent to allow superior individuals to 
organize them, it must be capable of appreciating excellence; 
otherwise they will fail in submission, in continuously appoint- 
ing equally wise administrators, or in preserving the excellent 
features long enough to allow them to produce their appro- 
priate results. In a popular government the wisdom of the 
statesmen must be fully supported by the clear, steady intel- 
ligence of the populace. 

So far as we have examined we have seen this to be the case 
in the Yalley, in a general way, and that the wisdom of the 
people increased more rapidly in proportion than the growth 
of the country. Elements of danger and difficulty multiplied 
on every hand as population from without poured in; yet the 
people proved themselves masters of every situation, solved 
every difficulty in harmony with the principles first adopted, 
and made eminent progress in every direction. Whence 
they derived this intelligence, and how they perpetuated and 
increased it for three generations, are questions of interest. 
If they receive but a general and partial answer here it is be- 
cause this was only a Period of Beginnings, and in following 
out their results at a later time, it will l)e more interesting 
and impressive to make the view of educational progress in 
the Yalley fiiirly complete then. To notice when and where 
the tree, that afterwards bore noble fruit, was planted, and 

852 



okictIN of popular education. 353 

from what sources its roots drew uonrishment, falls in with 
the present plan and is essential to a full comprehension of 
the character of this epoch. 

Almost as soon as there came to be educated men in the 
Greek republics, nearly 500 years before the Christian Era, 
the importance of general education was perceived by the 
more thoughtful; but they were too far ahead of their times 
to be able to give prevalence to their views. The Christian 
church had no sooner emei'ged from its early persecutions than 
it began to educate the common people; but the disorders of 
the time allowed them small success. Serious efforts were 
made l)y Charlemagne to promote study, and the church, from 
800 to 1200, issued frequent decrees, through Popes and Coun- 
cils, ordering the establishment of schools for the children of 
the poor, without pay; but the disorganized and miserable state 
in which society was held by the Feudal System defeated these 
efforts. Besides, until the multiplication of books by the dis- 
covery of the printing press, in 1440, their scarcity and high 
price made progress almost impossible. 

The religious reformers of the sixteenth century, a hundred 
years later, availed themselves of the press to promulgate their 
views, and naturally took much interest in the spread of edu- 
cation among the common people. Protestantism was an 
appeal from the authority of the few to the private judgment 
of each individual among the masses of the people. This 
appeal assumed previous instruction, the facilities for gaining 
it were now great, and education spread widely, especially 
amono; the Germans and Ano-lo-Saxons. The relio-ious and 
political disorders of England prevented its taking the lead 
in well organized school systems, and Germany had the honor 
of making the first persistent and successful attempts to 
organize o-eneral education. 

At an early period, in England, numerous grammar schools 
had been established by persons of wealth and eminence, 
which were largely increased from time to time, after the 
23 



354 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

destruction of monastic establishments; and, for three centu- 
ries before the establishment of American Independence, 
sums that would be equivalent to three or four millions of 
dollars were expended annually on grammar schools and free 
schools, in educating the English people. Parochial schools 
were established in Scotland in 1606, which contributed 
greatly to general education. The wealthier classes in Eng- 
land have been educated, for many centuries, in the universi- 
ties of Oxford and Cambridge. Holland and Sweden had 
taken pains to promote general instruction before the period 
of English settlement in America; and thus the nationalities 
which sent the most of the emigrants who aided in founding 
the Thirteen Colonies, sent with them the habit of, and the 
desire for, popular education. 

The Puritans of IS^ew England immediately ordered schools 
to be established in all the townships, and all the other colonies, 
from New York to Georgia, followed their example, more or 
less closely, or rather, brought with them from England, 
Holland, Sweden, Huguenot France and Germany, school- 
masters and books, as a necessity of life. 

Before 1776, there were eleven Colleges in existence in the 
colonies which remain to this day ; and nine academies, 
founded between 1665 and 1774, are still in operation. Before 
1800 twelve more colleges and twenty-eight academies, that 
are still flourishing, were founded. Out of New England, 
the w^ant of common schools, organized by the government 
for teaching the rudiments of education, was supplied by 
church, or parochial, and private schools. In 1776 there were 
twenty-nine libraries in the thirteen new made States, and 
thirty-seven newspapers. The latter increased to 150 by 
1800. 

Washington, Jeft'erson, Hamilton, and all the statesmen 
who acted a distinguished part in founding our institutions, 
urged the greatest diligence in providing for universal educa- 
tion, and the framers of the ordinance of 1787 were mindful 



EAKLY HINDKANOES TO COMMON SCHOOLS. 355 

of this point, when they insisted, in this fundamental law 
which controlled the foundation of five great States, on " the 
means of education '' beintj^ provided '' and the encourage- 
ment of schools." In 1802, the Congress of the United 
States gave effect to this provision, by presenting the sixteenth 
section in each township, or the thirty-sixth part of the pub- 
lic lands, to the State of Ohio for the support of common 
schools, besides three whole townships in support of colleges. 
This became a common provision in forming the new states 
ever after. 

The settlers, then, brought across the mountains a sense of 
the importance of education. During the Indian wars and 
the disturbed and scattered state of the settlements, they could 
do little to give effect to this feeling; but Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee made provisions for educational establishments as soon 
as they had organized governments, and Ohio imitated New 
England, from the first, as far as the scattered condition of the 
settlers and their limited means permitted. These two last 
mentioned obstacles were an almost insuperable bar to the 
advancement of education, in the newer and more thinly set- 
tled sections of the Valley, for more than fifty years. In the 
towns and more prosperous settlements, which were commonly 
near the navigable streams, these difficulties were soon con- 
quered, to a considerable extent, and where a number of fam- 
ilies lived near each other, and found a sufiicient market for 
labor £>Y produce to raise the means, they combined to support 
a school. 

Often, however, they lived far apart, the State had small 
cash resources for distribution, or none at all, and multitudes 
of the young grew up with no means of education. Books 
were scarce and dear, and money scarcer still; therefore much 
of western society was, for a long time, wild and rude. A 
love of isolation and solitude, combined with the hope of bet- 
tering their fortunes and the spirit of adventure to introduce 
on the frontiers the habit of selling " improvements," as pop- 



356 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ulation began to multiply, and g'oing to wilder and more louelj 
regions to commence anew. An emigrating mania, thus, for 
several decades, kept a portion of the people far from all edu- 
cational advantages, and multitudes of the young grew up to 
manhood with little or no culture. But such a life had com- 
paratively few of the disadvantages which surround ignor- 
ance in the midst of a numerous society. The woods and 
prairies allowed them to grow wild; they did not often be- 
come corrupt — a very fortunate circumstance. 

To this is to be added that inhabitants from more favored 
regions settled near, or mingled with, them, from time to time; 
association with these modified their ignorance and rudeness, 
and, after the close of the war of 1812, a steady improvement 
went on. The intellectual ambition of the Anglo-Saxon race 
did not permit them to become debased, and prompted them 
to improve all the means of rising that fell in their way. 
The West was again indebted to the East and to Europe, when 
order beijan to rise out of the social chaos of settlement. In 
some of the eastern States an organized common school sys- 
tem had been attempted, about the beginning of the century, 
which was not very successful, at first, from lack of means and 
experience; they were repeated and improved, from 1812 to 
1820, and began then to awaken the interest of all sections of 
the country. About 1830 the German methods, which had been 
thoroughly reorganized and much improved after the great wars 
with Napoleon, began to be studied by other nations, and-capa- 
ble men were sent, from different sections of this country, to 
observe and report on them. The result was a remarkable 
growth of interest in the organization of common schools in 
most of the old States. 

The enthusiasm was, in due time, communicated to the 
West, which was beginning to feel the pulses of a new pros- 
perity as its commerce and resources enlarged after the in- 
troduction of steamboats on its rivers and lakes. The large 
immigration of families accustomed to consider education 



THE FREE SCHOOL SYSTEM IN THE VALLEY. 357 

indispensable, the westward flow of ambitious young men, 
recent graduates of eastern schools, who, with little or no 
capital but their education to start them in life, sought situ- 
ations for teaching until a higher career should open to them, 
gave a new impulse to the tendency in the direction of general 
education which could not fail to become strong among all 
who felt anxious for the success of the new Republic. 

The importance of a system of free schools began to be agi- 
tated in Ohio soon after 1820, and, at the same time with a 
great system of public works, one was organized by law, in 
that State, in February, 1825. The zealous partisans of each 
united, joined hands to carry through what neither could do 
alone, and commenced, in both cases, a new stage of develop- 
ment for the State, and, by the force of its example, for all 
the West. Indiana had already inserted an educational law 
in her statute book, as a beginning. Illinois was involved in 
many financial disasters by the inexperience and overhaste of 
her legislators. When, in 1845, she began to recover and to 
attend more carefully to educational interests, it was still found 
difficult to organize a satisfactory system and provide a suffi- 
cient fund for the education of all the young in the State. 
After many efforts, with imperfect results, a law of 1855 set 
her educational machinery in motion with great success. 

About 1837 Michigan commenced a fine career as a State 
educator. Between 1850 and 1860 a very great improvement 
took place in most of the States of the West. Kentucky and 
Louisiana, and other southern, or slave, States, had endeavored 
to organize in the same direction. The General Government 
was generous in bestowing public lands, which laid the foun- 
dation of a liberal fund for popular education. In the free 
States the difficulties to efficient organization constantly dimin- 
ished as population multiplied, as ignorance of methods was 
dissipated by agitation and by success in various States, 
and as resources increased. In most of the slave States, how- 
ever, the hindrances to a good and efficient svstem of com- 



358 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

mon scliools tended to increase. Estates became larger and 
the white inhabitants more scattered ; tlie education of the 
blacks was found incompatible with their continuance in 
slavery, and a great inequality of conditions — inconsiderable 
at first — gradually arose among the whites, which rendered a 
common school system, like those of the northern States, more 
and more difiicult. Education was not neglected, but was con- 
fined chiefly to the wealthier classes and to the towns, or to 
private schools or family tutors. Perhaps a larger number in 
proportion received a finished education. 

In 1832, there were nineteen colleges in the Western 
States and less than half the number in the Southern 
part of the Valley. The number of pupils in the schools was 
one to five of the whole population in New England, one to 
eight in Pennsylvania, one to thirteen in Illinois and one to 
twenty-one in Kentucky. That State, Tennessee and Mis- 
souri were more successful in general education than the 
cotton-growing States of the lower Valley. Yet, leaving out 
the blacks, there was as wide a diff'usion of intelligence as 
could possibly be expected in a country so new. 

The Northwestern States, having fewer checks to educational 
improvement and a larger number of earnest and ambitious 
partisans of universal education, once fairly entered on this 
career of organization and reform, pursued it with a vigor 
and thoroughness worthy of all praise. Republican freedom, 
the invigorating discipline inseparable from the conquest of 
so many enemies, and the establishment of all the attributes 
and comforts of civilization in the course of a few generations 
in the wilds of the western continent, had the eftect to add to 
the sober and conservative progressiveness of the Anglo-Saxon 
somewhat of the dash and vivacity of the Gallic race. The 
American has some of the characteristics of the Frenchman. 

The rapid growth of the Valley encouraged these features 
of Anglo-American character. These rich resources and 
great opportunities stimulated conception and execution. In 



RAPID GROWTH OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS. 359 

a few years a wild forest or a vii-giu prairie appeared like a 
long settled region. The entire complicated niacliinery of 
social, industrial, commercial and political life was organized. 
Between 181U and 1860 a work, that might liave sufficed 
for a century in any other country, was accomplished by the 
busy thought and the active hand of the Valley. 

In 1850 the number of schools of all classes in the United 
States and Territories was 87,257. Of these, 42,360 w^ere in 
the Valley; and, out of 3,642,094 pupils in all the schools in 
the country at that time, 1,581,000 were in the Valley. Ohio 
M'as the most compactly settled, the oldest of the Northwestern 
States, and had the largest number of inhabitants of New 
England origin. She had also given more careful attention 
to her schools for a longer period than any other in the West. 
She had about one fourth of the whole number of schools in 
the Valley in 1850 and nearly one third of all the pupils. The 
schools of all the East had been educating the future inhab- 
itants of the Valley from the first. Therefore its measure of 
educated intelligence was always very much greater than 
could be furnished by its own schools. Its relations to the 
rest of the Union were greatly in its favor. It received a 
good portion of the educated men, of the best and most active 
business talent, and of the productive capital of the country. 
How^ could it fail to prosper ? 

In 1860 there were 115,224 schools of all kinds in the wdiole 
country. Of these, 63,700 were in the Valley — over 5,000 
more than one half of the whole — while, out of the 5,477,037 
pupils attending all the schools in the country, 3,175,800 
were in the Valley — nearly two thirds of the whole. The 
increase in the number of schools in the whole country from 
1850 to 1860 was 28,224, of which 21,340 were in the Valley. 
The whole increase in the number of pupils in all the schools 
of the Republic was 1,834,943, of which number 1,594,800, 
were in the Valley. The increase of pupils in all the rest of 
the country east and west of tlie Valley, in the ten years, was 



360 THK :SIIS.SISSIPPI VALLEY. 

only a little over 240,000 — the gain in the Valley was, there- 
fore, nearly seven times that of the other States and Terri- 
tories. 

Modern intelligence is sometimes estimated by the circula- 
tion of newspapers. In 1850 there were 2,520 newspapers in 
the United States and Territories; in 1860 there were 4,051. 
There were 1,060 in the Valley in 1850; in 1860 it had 2,048. 
The gain in the Valley was 988; in the rest of the country 
537 — but little more than half as much. The whole number 
of copies of all these newspapers printed in 1850 was 426,400,- 
9T8; in 1860 it was 927,951,548 — about seventy-five million 
more than double. The number of copies printed in the Val- 
ley in 1850 was 95,071,615; in 1860, 239,817,362, the number 
here being nearly two and a half times as many. The abso- 
lute increase of the rest of the country was nearly one and a 
half times o^reater than the increase in the Valley durinfj^ the 
ten years; but the western and southern papers had, in gen- 
eral, but a limited local circulation, while many of the news- 
])apers of the East had been long established, were ably edited, 
and had avast circulation in the Valley itself. Every number 
of these papers read in the Valley would diminish the differ- 
ence by two. It is probable that all the numbers of dailies, 
semi-weeklies and weeklies printed in the East and sent to the 
Valley would restore to it much of the superiority in this point 
also. 

The earnest and almost universal interest in education, the 
great facilities which had been multiplying rapidly for thirty 
years, and the general previous education of the immigrants, 
insured a high degree of intelligence throughout the Valley 
among all the white po^^ulation, which the universal diffusion 
of newspaper literature aided very much to develop. Great 
prosperity and a long experience had enabled most of the 
more populous States, especially of the upper Valley, to per- 
fect the oro^anization of schools of all trades and to ori^'s them 
an extension so complete that the most happy results were 



GREAT ACTrVITV OF MOKAL FOKCKS. o^il 

obtained during all this decade. The r^ualifications of teach- 
ers were everywhere raised and greater tlioroug-hness olitained. 
The same opportunities were perhaps twice as eftective in I8(lii 
as in 1840 in the great mass of common schools, and a much 
larger nnniber in proportion received an extended education. 
Moral and religious influences also gained in about the same 
proportion. In 1850 there were 18,300 churches in the \^al- 
ley, they had increased, in 1860, to 28,800— a gain of 10,500. 
The gain in the number of churches in the rest of the coun- 
try was but 5,400. This indicates great religious activity and 
a large proportionate increase of moral foi'ce. The value of 
church property in the whole Valley, in 1850, was $24,300,- 
000; in 1860, $58,100,000. In the rest of the country the 
gain was $50,154,000, and in the Valley $33,800,000. The 
precious metals produced in California at this time, and the 
great prosperity of the whole country spread ease and wealth 
through the East. The West was employed in laying foun- 
dations. Costly .church buildings became abundant in the 
former; in the latter a larger proportion were inexpensive. 
Church accommodations in the Valley increased from 6,400,- 
000 to 9,700,000, a gain of 3,300,000 sittings; while in the 
rest of the country the gain of sittings was but 1,591,000 — a 
mu(!h more extensive provision for religious instruction and 
all the ameliorating and elevating influences which it exerts 
on society was thus made in the Valley. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS TO 1860. 

Manufactures coinnienced in the Valley with the lirst fam- 
ilies .who occupied the log cabins and block houses raised in 
the incipient clearings. They could bring, almost nothing 
with them through the forest paths that were followed across 
the mountains and valleys. What they could not do without 
their own ingenious skill must produce. With almost no 
tools these were rude enough, but served the purpose. But 
soon the active enterprise and inventive genius native to the 
race commenced manufactures at Pittsburgh. This was^ 
necessarily, by slow degrees, for the people had little where- 
with to pay. When the Indian war was over, however, manu- 
factures prospered in Pittsburgh, whicli soon became famous 
for its glass and iron works, and ever continued to be one of 
the principal centers of this industry; so much so, indeed, 
that it was called the " Birmingham of the West." The 
Yankees of Ohio soon contrived to give it a rival in Cincin- 
nati. 

Manufactures were carried on by mechanics on a compara- 
tively small scale, in most of the villages, for local sale, and 
trade gradually enlarged the call for the products of the chief 
manufacturing centers until after 1815, when they received a 
great impulse. Iron works multiplied in Western Pennsylva- 
nia, Ohio and Tennessee. Machinery for steam engines, and 
every variety of iron articles then in use, was made at Pitts- 
l)urgh and Cincinnati. 

In 1826, Cincinnati produced $1,800,000 worth of manu- 
factures. It was estimated, in 1835, that the amount was 
$5,000,000. Pittsburgh was not far behind, and along the 
Oliio and many of the towns on the streams tributary to it 

362 



THE RISE OF MANUFACTURES IN THE WEST. 363 

factories sprung up at an early time. Accurate statistics were 
not easily obtained in periods prior to 1850, but tlie increase 
was very rapid. In 1840, Ci)icinnati produced manufactured 
articles'valued at $14,500,000; and in 1841, $17,400,000; and 
in 1847, the production was believed to be nearly $30,000,000. 
In 1850, tlie whole Valley produced manufactures valued 
at $240,000,000. In 1860, at $440,000,000. Manufacturing 
establishments numbered 41,968, in 1850, and 52,137 in 1860. 

While manufactures shyly stood in the background of the 
upper Ohio, as if uncertain of the reception they might meet in 
the middle Valley, devoted by its soil to agriculture, and by 
its Rivers, Lakes and Gulf to commerce and trade, these last 
availed themselves of its machinery to enlarge their operations 
a thousand fold. Not until the railroad era had prepared their 
way, did the more important manufactures venture boldly out 
from the vicinity of the mountains and establish themselves 
on the borders of the prairies, at Chicago and St. Louis. From 
those points they spread themselves through the West. The 
general diifusion, however, w^as deferred, in large part, until 
the civil war was over. 

By the time three millions of people had settled themselves 
to the work of developing the resources of the soil in the 
Valley — which was only one generation after the first census 
in 1790 had ascertained that tliere were but little over three 
millions of whites in the whole United States — commerce 
and trade had secured the effective aid of steam. 

Up to that time, the river currents and human muscle had 
been the main propelling forces used by internal commerce. 
The Erie canal was not opened to the lake for several years, 
and the wind could be but little used on the rivers. Muscle 
and current were opposed to each other when the rivers had 
to be ascended. The wall power and muscular force among 
the stalwart settlers were great, but the difficulties opposed 
by vast distances were still greater. Man alone against nature 
is weak; when he can summon any desirable amount of natural 



36-4 THE MississiiM-i valley. 

force to his aid, und his mental power is turned from the use 
of the muscles to the product and supervision of machinery 
that obliges nature herself to become his drudge, he is really 
supreme. 

So the property that floated on the streams of the Yalley 
for exchange rose from a few millions in 1821, to $220,000,000 
in 1841, and $350,000,000 in 1850. In the latter year, the 
commerce of the lakes was estimated at $1-10,000,000, and 
railroads had already begun to share the burden of transpor- 
tation to and from the Yalley, so that $500,000,000 would 
not cover the value of this interior commerce. Manufactures 
had now come to be produced in the Yalley itself at the rate 
of hundreds of millions of dollars annually, and only part 
of these were distributed by the water routes, so that trade 
outside these lines was immense. AVe may suppose the trade 
of the whole Yalley to have been worth, at least, one thousand 
million dollars a year at this time. This was only the begin- 
ning of the colossal activities developed in the Yalley ; for 
only now was the transporting agent capable of answering 
all demands. 

All this vast business rested on agriculture as its base. The 
manufactures were only for the Yalley, and were very far from 
supplying its wants. Millions of people were supported in 
the East and in Europe by the proceeds of the fabrics they 
made for the Yalley people. More than half of the foreign 
exports of the country were drawn from the soil of this region, 
and a large part of the wealth gained by the Eastern trades- 
men, manufacturers and capitalists was furnished from the 
same source. By 1852, $100,000,000 had been invested in 
building canals to furnish additional outlets to the produce 
of western farms, and from 1850 to 1860 some hundreds of 
millions of dollars were spent in building railroads in the 
Yalley itself. In 1859 the revenues of the four trunk lines, 
connecting the northern Yalley with the seaboard, were $l!'.- 
500,000. We are lost, from this time, in vast tigures, which 



THE GREAT PROGRPJSS MADE FROM 1850 TO 1860. 865 

labor in vain to represent to us the great results of develop- 
ment in this fruitful soil. The channels of commerce and 
trade whose spring was in the Valley, had become so nujner- 
ous, flowed so freely, and in so many directions, that it is 
quite impossible to ascertain their sum. 

Agricultural begiimings had been small. At first there 
was little demand for the food products the settlers could fur- 
nish so readily. But, by degrees, steam changed the face of 
the world and revolutionized business. ]\Ianufacturinir and 
commercial activity produced hundreds of millions and sent 
them circulating through the Valley, the Atlantic States and 
Europe. Great cities multiplied everywhere, or increased 
their populations to be fed, at an unprecedented rate, and 
markets enlarged. Steamboats and railroads came when the 
world was ready for them. Agriculture in the Valley devel- 
oped as markets opened and facilities for transportation were 
supplied. It was the Age of Invention, the Age of Begin- 
nings for new and broader activities, the world over. To pro- 
duce the machinery, and all the accompaniments of its use, 
required the labor of vast numbers of workmen, and other 
multitudes entered the shops and manufactories that were 
prepared to transform the raw material into articles of trade 
to be transported over the world. It was an extraordinary 
time — one of the great crises in the progress of mankind. 

Most of the enlargement, in Europe and America, reacted 
on the Valley, in some form, and increased its prosperity. Its 
resources were inexhaustible and easily drawn out as required. 
The farmers had overflowing crops on a small percentage of 
the soil; they stood ready to answer all calls for food supplies 
and cotton. Had the demand been ten times as large it would 
soon have been met. This progress has always waited on the 
needs of the rest of the world, that is, on markets. The num- 
ber of acres of improved land, in 1850, was 52,400,000; in 
1800, it was 90,000,000. The value of all the land inclosed in 
farms was $1,400,000,000 in 1850 ; in 1860 it was §3,700,000,000. 



366 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Tlie annual value of the agricultural products of the whole 
country was increased, during this ten years, by $1,000,000,000, 
and niuch the largest part of this increase was in the Valley. 

The investnieat of capital from sources outside the Valley 
was veiy extensive. The people themselves had ail they could 
do here to lay foundations. The farms were to be opened; 
private dwellings, fences, barns, agricultural implements and 
stock, absorbed vast sums. In older sections the public build- 
ings for State, county, city or town and neighborhood uses; 
the roads, grading, paving, waterworks and various municipal 
undertakings, of city and country, had already been supplied. 
Here, they must be furnished while the people were in the 
act of settlement. Countless millions were so exj)ended, and 
often by the help of loans from outside capitalists, for which 
they paid high interest. It was not, therefore, only its own 
people that were enriched. The gain in personal property 
and real estate, since 1850, was made, by the census of 1860, 
to stand at $2,500,000,000. It is very likely that the actual 
production of wealth invested in various ways, within and 
without the Yalley, not here included, would add one thou- 
sand million dollars more to this sum. In 1850 it had taken 
seventy-five years to accumulate property worth $3,100,000,- 
000 in the Yalley, and it was nearly doubled between that 
year and 1860. 

It seems a marvelous tale to tell; yet this was small com- 
pared with gains at a later period. All this was but laying 
foundations. Only a part of the resources lying near the sur- 
face had been gathered. They still lay on the surface, offer- 
ing themselves to the first comer, in inexhaustible profusion; 
and beneath the surface, to be sought by practiced skill, there 
was a bottomless ocean of material for wealth. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE VALLEY IN 1860. 



It is not easy to see how a people and a region could have 
been better fitted to each other than these Anglo-Americans, 
with an infusion of industrious Europeans, and the Missis- 
sippi Valley. The long Geological Ages had given it the 
precise form and outlets to be desired. By the help of facil- 
ities for communication with the Atlantic and Europe the 
right stimulus was given at the right time; by its barriers 
against ingress and egress in the early days a degree of iso- 
lation and discipline was possible, through a period suffi- 
ciently long to make a permanent impression, of the most 
desi:yable kind, on the character of the race which was to pos- 
sess and rule it. Vegetable life had helj)ed to store it with 
iron, with petroleum and coal, and gathered the richest surface 
mould; animal life had aided in various ways to strengthen 
its soil and furnish it with suitable qualities of rock for all its 
general purposes. Fire and water, expansion and contraction, 
ocean and lake and marsh, sun and winds and rain, were all 
controlled so as to do their work for the great advantage of this 
favored region. The history of Mound Builders, Indians, and 
European nations in their enterprises in the New "World, had 
all been guided so that the right people should find no invin- 
cible difiiculties in taking possession of its virgin treasures. 

So, also, Anglo-American history on the Atlantic side of the 
Alleghanies had reached the most favorable point when the 
theatre of significant events was extended westward ; the 
ambitions of France, Spain and England, and the schemes of 
Aaron Burr failed; the necessities of France and the foresight 
of Napoleon united every slope of the Valley politically as the 
Mississippi united them naturally. At the critical time the 

367 



368 THE MISSISSIPPI v^vlley. 

steamboat was invented for its waters, and again the railroad 
for its plains and prairies, and the markets of England were 
thrown open by free trade just when the Valley was ready to 
till them with its produce. Thus, all the seeming accidents 
that played an important part in its history tell a tale of fore- 
sight and supervision — were made determining influences to 
accumulate and preserve a vast mass of material to l)e yielded 
up to those who would use it wisely, at tlie right moment to 
give an immense impulse to the progress of civilization. 

Hardy, bold and ready for conflict and deprivation as only 
the rude backwoodsman can be; intelligent, industrious and 
attached to legal order as Anglo-Saxons naturally are; the 
adventurous, untaught and poor pioneers faced the forest, the 
red hunter and the hardships of an interior settlement with- 
out shrinking and conducted themselves with singular pru- 
dence. The chief difficulties surmounted, independent, un- 
curbed by arbitrary power or by education, the bold boister- 
ousness of their young men seemed likely to reduce society 
to chaos. Nothing of that kind occurred. It was the flush 
of buoyant health, of overflowing vigor and the consciousness 
of capability, rather than the license of vice. It settled into 
highly civilized and polished ambition when once the idea 
was caught and the opening appeared. It was the rough- 
ness of the uncut diamond which intercourse with men soon 
rubbed down, revealing the rare quality beneath. 

This peo|)le, with hints, suggestions and example alone from 
the other side of the mountains, formed their own institutions, 
selected their own laws and officers, legislated foi- themselves 
and became responsiljle for the prevalence of liberty and law. 
They made many a mistake in (piestions of detail, but none 
in constitutional principles. The mistakes they well knew 
how to remedy. The result was security to property, with 
the healthiest freedom of action ; general morality, without 
painful constraint. This wise moderation and good order 
highly favored the influx of people and of money. The 



FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL DANGERS AVOIDED. 3t)9 

quiet and intelligent conld come without fear and invest- 
ments could l)e made with confidence. Every possible barrier 
to the truest progress was thrown down ; every possible en- 
couragement to active enterprise was given. With such a 
])rudent policy. Eastern and European capital stood ready to 
aid all useful undertakings. It was only necessaiy to show 
that they would ])ay l)y a speedy development. The greatest 
trouble was not too little confidence, too short a credit, but 
too much. jSTot too much trust in men^ but in the rush of 
business. If development go fast in one direction it may 
outrun the progress made in others. An army must move 
together ; its divisions must be in supporting distance. 
The divisions of industrial progress did not all move with 
equal step in the Valley, at times, and disorder sometimes 
appeared in the finances. But this was only temporary. A 
little time for the laggard branches to come up, a careful 
revision of past policy, and the race commenced anew. 

The political history of the States was singularly free from 
resistance to constituted authority. A single case in "Western 
Pennsylvania, of rebellion against a tax of the General Gov- 
ernment, occurred during the administration of Washington 
in 1792. The Government was firm and opposition disaj^- 
peared. Yet men were self-seeking and ambitious — there was 
more liberty to be so here than anywhere else in the world — 
every man had a recognized riglit to his opinion and to advo- 
cate it; every man was free to act, so he did not violate the 
law. There often appeared to be much turbulence ; party 
spirit ran high and self-seeking did not always regard public 
or individual good. Every ])eriod had its peculiar troubles 
and fears ; each jiarty was sure the other would ruin the 
State or country ; there were always examples enough 
of roguery, of crime, of artful maneuvering for illegal 
advantages, of stratagems to acquire place and power, to fill 
the timid and shortsighted with apprehension for the future. 
That future showed that those fears were gratuitous. The 
24 



370 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

main facts were most honorable to the people, the parties and 
the multitude of individuals. Evils truly threatened van- 
ished, not by main force, nor so much by excess of general 
purity, as by the law of interest. 

Society is a body, as fully organized by natural relationships 
and laws as a human body. It has vital forces, like any other 
organized body, and its health can be secured best by an unre- 
stricted operation of these forces ; too much government 
coddling interferes with them ; there was the minimum of 
government here; they had nowhere, in any place or time, 
operated so fully as in the Valley. The result was health 
and soundness. The vigor of life subdued and expelled dis- 
order; a tendency to equilibrium — to justice and respect for 
public and j^ersonal right — asserted itself. That is a point of 
great importance ; it has had much to do with the safe and 
rapid progress of American institutions. 

Under all these favoring circumstances, by dint of an active, 
natural, healthy life — a life full of labor, where all were 
thrown on their own resources, and no system of organized 
favoritism helped one and oppressed another — progress was 
great to an unheard of degree. Almost every feature of the 
history of this region — the northern Valley especially — was 
so favorable, so rich in solid results, that it might seem almost 
as if the people ought to be spoiled by their own success. 
But life was too healthy and busy for that. It is the idle 
who are most likely to be demoralized by wealth. 

There was, however, in 1860, a dark reverse to this bright 
side. It had gradually been taking form and consistence 
from the adoption of the Constitution. The labor systems of 
the Korth and South were in violent contrast, in some respects, 
and constantly tended to the disadvantage of each. The in- 
dustrial difference was irreconcilable. The interest of the 
upper Valley required the full development of the lower ; 
that it should l)e rilled with a population such as naturally 
belonged with its great and various resources. As it was, 



THE RETTERSE OF A BRIGHT PICTURE. 371 

there were a few lines of development only ; the results 
tended to accumulate in few hands; white labor was practi- 
cally excluded and black labor did not open much market. 
In large part it was as if the southern Valley had l>een want- 
ing, and the northern basin would have been, perhaps, better 
off had it been really absent if the facilities of ocean com- 
merce could have been put in place of the comj)aratively small 
trade carried on between the sections. The world could not 
well do without the cotton; but it might be raised elsewhere, 
and only a small part of it benefitted the free States. 

The Xortli put a moral objection foremost, but much of its 
political strength lay in the industrial objection. The South 
grew irritated and indignant, felt injured and persecuted, and 
bitter feeling produced added evils. A sharp struggle was 
commenced on the embodiment of northern objection to 
slavery in a political party. It did not demand tlie aboli- 
tion of slavery — it souglit only t-o prevent its extension — but 
the desire to remove it lay at the bottom, and its extension 
was the only security for the S<:)uth of retaining an equal 
influence over federal treatment of it. It drove the sections 
apart on a conventional line, more and more interrupted har- 
mony, and threatened great evils to the West. Liinits were 
set to its expansion when it was in full career; it might be cut 
oft* from the Gulf and the use of the river, its most natural 
outlet, and, at the very least, an artificial division would em- 
barrass growth. 

As it was a matter of feeling in favor of an institution 
interwoven with all their social as well as industrial habits, 
the lately increased facilities of intercourse by railroads could 
not overcxjme the difficulty any more than the interest con- 
nected with the river system could do it. Rather, the closer 
they were drawn together by outward forces, the farther apart 
they drifted in antagonism. 

The railroad system had, in large part, monopolized the 
caiTying trade because it was speedy and the principal markets 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



of the free States lay directly east of tliem. Tlie bind ing influ- 
ence of the river was much diminished when another adequate 
substitute, which might answer all purposes for a long time, 
was provided. It seemed as if the South must suffer most; yet 
she lay on the Gulf and the ocean, and supplied most of the 
world's cotton. The political difficulty was increased by the 
superiority of the free and more populous North in filling 
vacant territory with settlers in a short time. A final 
struggle in Kansas tested this point, turned in favor of that 
section, and hastened the determination of the South to 
separate. This conclusion was a sad interruption to a great 
career. Both sections had worked out beginnings and were 
ready to reap what they had sown when called away from 
labor by the tocsin of war. 

The means that had contributed in such a high degree to 
the wonderful development of the Yalley, that had seemed to 
join the sections indissolubly, became the most efficient aids 
to rival armies. The telegraph, which had so expedited busi- 
ness, now convej^ed military orders from, and information to, 
every important point. The work of months, by telegraph, 
river and rail, could be compressed into days. Armies con- 
centrated by railroad in an incredibly short time, and their 
movements could usually be followed by long trains contain- 
ing their baggage and supplies for support and defence or for 
aggression. The steamboat was equally useful, for, if it could 
not go everywhere, it could reach numerous important points, 
be made a floating battery besides, and become a powerful 
engine of war. 

Both railroads and steamboats added to the magnitude and 
destructiveness of the conflict. Larger armies could be gath- 
ered, fed and rapidly moved from point to point; destructive 
engines of war of great weight could be quickly moved. But, 
inasmuch as the South stood chiefly on the defensive, these 
agencies were more harmful to her. Her coasts and rivers 
could be attacked by powerful shipping, and railroads took 



EFFECT OF KIVERS AND RAILROADS ON THE WAR. oio 

vast armies far into her borders, while the greater freedom and 
productive activity of her antagonist reaped vast advantage 
from the railway system that conducted the business of the 
North without hindrance, and kept up supplies of men and 
stores for tlie attack. But for these, possibly, she might have 
succeeded in breaking away, permanently, from the bonds 
that had been so useful and dear but now were so hateful. 



CHAPTEK XXIII. 



THE CONFLICT AND ITS LESSONS. 



The civil war was caused by a conflict of labor systems. 
The disapproval of the southern system in the free States was 
based on moral and economic grounds and on its inconsistency 
with tlie theories of democratic equality, on wliich American 
institutions were held to be founded. The resistance in the 
South was founded on the great difference between the white 
and colored races, which, in the belief of the southern people, 
met the moral and democratic objections; on the relations 
which their labor system sustained to all their industrial and 
financial interests and to their social organization; and on 
their absolute right to undisturbed control of a local insti- 
tution which had been recognized in the formation of the 
Republic. 

The conflict broke out on the question of the extension of 
that system. The South required its enlargement to main- 
tain political equilibrium; the Xorth refused to consent. The 
exact legal status of the question was violently disputed; the 
forces behind such questions permitted no common under- 
standing and the South determined on separation. The free 
States were in possession of the Federal Government and 
refused to permit it. The sword alone could decide the ques- 
tion. The North considered it impossible to abandon either 
the fundamental principle of democratic liberty or the Union 
on which general prosperity depended. The South saw all its 
interests and its own personal liberties involved. Such was 
the Gordian knot of difficulty to be cut by war. 

After the presidential election of November. 1800, South 
Carolina commenced preparations for leaving the Union. 
In February, the new confederacy was provisionally organized 

374 



THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CONFLICT. 375 

at Montgomery, Ala., which then included only the more 
Southern states from Texas to the Carolinas, Virginia, Ten- 
nessee and Arkansas were slower in their action, but decided 
in May to join their fortunes to the Confederate States. 
West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri were divided in 
opinion. The bombardment of Fort Sumter, a Federal 
fortress in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, in April, 
1861, opened the military conflict and " let loose the dou-s of 
war." 

From that time preparation was diligently made on each 
side, though nearly ten months elapsed before anything more 
than preliminary trials of strength occurred. The severest 
engagements were skirmishing compared to the serious work 
that followed. Indeed, it was not to be expected that citizens 
should become skillful in war without an introductory train- 
ing and discipline. The battle of Bull liun, the campaign in 
West Virginia, the many fights in Missouri, and the few that 
preceded the advance of the Federal army under Grant on 
Forts Henry and Donelson in Kentucky, were all of that 
character. They were the first essays of citizens in arms who 
w^ere learning to be soldiers. There was too much serious- 
ness and resolution behind these, sometimes awkward and 
uncertain, essays in war not to make them extremely useful 
lessons. There was good material for soldiers on each side. 

The active and decisive parts of the great conflict took 
place in the Valley, because its result depended on the posses- 
sion of that fountain of resources. If the central artery of 
the Valley could be held by the South and its lower Valley 
defended, the armies in Virginia would not be able to decide 
the issue. In this view the taking of Vicksburg was a 
much more important event than the battle of Gettysburg, 
which sent Lee back to Virginia, for it opened the whole 
length of the great riv^er to Federal use ; and the battle of 
Chickamauga, with the subsequent series of battles ending 
with the capture of Atlanta and the dispersion of the great 



376 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Soutliern army in the Yallej, had more effect on the result 
than the campaign in the Wilderness which drove General 
Lee from the Kapidan to Petersburg. Whatever the com- 
parative size of the armies or the force and skill employed, 
it was necessary for the winning side to hold the Valley. It 
furnished the strength and resources indispensable to a con- 
tinuance of the conflict by the South. 

While the North was gathering and training its vast armies, 
the South hastened to occupy the frontiers of its wide Held. 
A confused conflict raged from Kansas to the Potomac through 
the border States. The Confederate forces occupied West 
Virginia, though not in suflicient strength to hold the line of 
the Ohio. Kentucky endeavored to remain neutral, but many 
of her citizens organized both for the North and the South. 
Federal forces gathered along the Ohio, while the Confederate 
armies occupied posts on the Mississippi River in the State, 
and their lines extended across the lower part of the State 
from Columbus to the mountains, the three points of 
advance from Tennessee being along the Mississippi, from 
Nashville, and from East Tennessee through the mountains. 
The active work began in West Virginia, which, l)y the middle 
of July, was fairly in the hands of the Federal troops, A 
widespread conflict continued all the summer in Missouri, no 
less than sixty battles and skirmishes having occurred up to the 
close of the year. The general result, though not very sharply 
deflned, was in favor of the Federal forces. There was less con- 
fusion and more of careful preparation in Kentucky, where 
the two armies did not hasten so much toward a trial of 
strength. This was regarded as the key of the situation, and 
a careful plan of Federal operations was not mature before 
midwinter. 

The first project of invasion in the Valley, entertained by 
the Federal authorities, was that of sending an expedition on 
gunboats down the Mississi]>pi to capture and hold command- 
ing positions on its banks, make them the basis of future expe- 



MirJT/\.KY STRATEGY AND RAILROADS. 377 

ditiou:^ into the interior, and isolate the western portion of the 
Confederacy. This was found to be a difficult matter, if not 
impossible, and a different strategy was soon devised — that of 
flanking and forcing the evacuation of these river fortresses by 
operations in the interior at their rear. In this plan the 
Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers played an important part, 
and the great features of the railway system of the southern 
Valley east of the Mississippi entered into it as a large factor. 
It played an important part in the years that followed, to the 
great advantage of the IS'orth and damage of the South. The 
lower part of the railroad system was of great importance to 
tlie Confederacy for the rapid concentration and transfer of 
forces, and transport of supplies to Yirginia and the border. 

From Paducah, on the Ohio, below Louisville, a continuous 
line of railway ran nearly due south to Mobile and 'New Orleans. 
From Memphis, at the southwest corner of Tennessee and on 
the Mississippi, a line skirted the northern border of the States 
of Mississippi and Alal)ama, to Chattanooga, in East Tennes- 
see, and thence northeast between the parallel ranges of the 
Alleghanies to the tidewaters of the Atlantic, in Virginia. 
This line was intersected at Decatur, Ala., and Stevenson, 
Ga., from the north by a road from Louisville, w^hieh passed 
through Bowling Green, Ky., where a branch connected with 
Memphis. Chattanooga was connected by railway through 
Atlanta, Ga., w^ith the Atlantic seaboard at Charleston, S. C., 
and Savannah, Ga., and with the Gulf at Pensacola, Florida. 
Vicksburg, a strong fortification on the east bank of the Mis- 
sissippi, midway between Memphis and Xew Orleans, was 
ultimately connected by railway with Montgomery, Ala., and 
Atlanta. 

The Confederate lines at Bowling Green were joined with 
the force at Columbus by the intermediate fortifications of 
Fort Henry, on the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the 
Cumberland. Paducah lies at the mouth of the Tennessee on 
the Ohio. Forts Henry and Donelson formed the center of 



378 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the Confederate line, which, being broken there, wouhl expose 
both Bowling Green and Columbus to an attack in the rear, or 
their communications with the Confederacy could be easily 
severed. 

This plan was adopted by the Federal commanders with 
success. While a Federal army confronted the Confederate 
forces at Bowling Green, another, supported by a fleet of gun- 
boats, ascended the Tennessee from Paducah and captured 
Fort Henry; the boats returned to the Ohio and ascended 
the Cumberland to Fort Donelson, the army crossed the 
short distance between the two rivers to the same point, and 
Donelson also fell. The Confederate forces at Columbus and 
Bowling Green were obliged, by this disaster, to withdraw 
without a struggle; Middle and East Tennessee were opened 
to Federal occupation, and the Confederate lines were re- 
formed south of the Tennessee River on the northern border of 
Mississippi. The disadvantage to the South of having so 
large a territory to defend with inferior forces and warlike 
material was apparent; it was, in fact, decisive of the whole 
struggle. It gave too much advantage to their opponents in 
mental warfare, or strategy. In a smaller field, as in Vir- 
ginia, where defensive strateg}'- could be employed to make up 
for inferiority of numbers, they were more successful. 

The Federal armies pressed forward against the new Con- 
federate line. Forts Henry and Donelson had fallen in Feb- 
ruary, 1862. By April the antagonists confronted each other 
on the south bank of the Tennessee at Shiloh, or Pittsburgh 
Landino^. Before the two Federal armies had concentrated 
the Confederates attacked the one nearest, at Shiloh, and one 
of the most desperate and characteristic battles of the war 
occurred. It was of extreme importance to the Confederacy 
to hold this line, for the Memphis and Chattanooga Railroad 
lay but a few miles to the south, and this was the most import- 
ant, shortest, and, at that time, the only line of communication 
between the eastern and western parts of their territory. The 



OPERATIONS IN THE EASTERN VALLEY. 379 

loss of it might be fatal to them. The Southern anny, about 
40,000 strong, was confronted by the Federal force under 
General Grant with 33,000 men. General Buell, commanding 
the Federal army that had lain l)etween Bowling Green and 
Louisville, was advancing to form a junction with Grant. 

This would give the Union army a great superiority of 
numbers. The Confederate army, therefore, made a furious 
attack which was with the utmost difficulty withstood by 
troops, in large part, recently recruited aud undisciplined. 
But the shades of night found rhem still in arms and reso- 
lutely refusing to acknowledge defeat, although nearly half 
their number had been disabled or killed. In the evening 
the army of General Bueli began to arrive and another day 
was fought through with a great increase of force on the Fed- 
eral side. The Confederate army was almost annihilated, but 
withdrew so bravely that its shattered aiid helpless condition 
was not suspected, and it remained a long time intrenched 
within a few miles, its defiant attitude conveying an impres- 
sion of strength which it did not possess. 

This disaster might, perhaps, have been repaired had not 
other parts of the field diverted so much of the attention of 
the Confederate Government. The fortifications on the Mis- 
sissippi below Columbus were soon taken. Commodore Far- 
ragut captured New Orleans and the lower defences of the 
river, and the Federal army, under McClellan, was threaten- 
ing Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital. The Federal 
forces also gained a foothold on the coast of North and South 
Carolina, and secured Pensacola. Only Yicksburg and Port 
Hudson held the two parts of the Confederacy together. 

Under such a cloud of misfortunes the South might well 
have despaired. It did not, however. McClellan was repulsed 
from the Peninsula and the tide of war again rolled up toward 
Washington, and even crossed the Potomac into Maryland for 
a time. A vigorous effort was made throughout the South; 
fresh armies were organized, and a bold push northward was 



380 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEV. 

made from East Tennessee as well as from Richmond. Gen- 
eral Buel was proceeding with his army from the neighbor- 
hood of Corinth to Chattanooga, when General Bragg, Con- 
federate commander, suddenly transferred his army ahead of 
him across Alal)ama to Chattanooga, and pushed forward into 
the fairest part of Kentucky, and toward Louisville, which re- 
quired Buell to repair to that point for its protection. After 
gathering vast and various supplies, which were much needed 
in the South, General Bragg succeeded, in conveying them 
away in safety and in withdrawing his army without a great 
battle. Although disappointed in its hope of holding Ken- 
tucky and carrying the war into the North, the South was 
inspired with new energy by such successes after so many 
great reverses, and tenaciously held on its way. 

Corinth and Memphis had fallen in June, principally by 
retreat after resistance became hopeless, and the most impor- 
tant line of railway joining the east and west of the Confed- 
eracy, between Memphis and Chattanooga, had passed mostly 
into Federal hands or been destroyed. The strong fortifica- 
tions of Yicksburg, and the east and west railway line of which 
it was the terminus, became the niai nstay and hope of the South. 
The Yazoo River and unfavorable ground protected the strong- 
hold in the rear, and for more than a year it resisted the most 
desperate efforts of the Federal generals. By the invasion of 
Kentucky after having lost both that State and most of Ten- 
nessee, the South barely failed of recovering nearly all it had 
lost, which gave it a glimpse of the possibilities of war from 
which its sturdy courage and unbending will took all the en- 
couragement it wished. 

The winter found it still in possession of E<ist Tennessee and 
the railway connections, so important to the Confederacy, at 
Chattanooga, and triumphantly holding Yicksburg. A long 
series of strategic movements and battles, covering much of 
Kentucky, Tennessee and parts of Alabama and Mississippi, 
had occupied the summer and fall. Arkansas had been the 



THE FEDERAL AND CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS. 08 1 

theatre of incessant conflict, but tlie bulk of the forces had 
been witlidrawn by both sides to support the more ci'itical 
operations in tlie eastern Valley. The bravery of the South- 
ern armies had covered them with glory and required an equal 
valor and far greater resources on the Federal side to make 
head against them. The Confederate soldier was often in want 
of almost everything but the most indispensable means of 
fighting and keeping life in his worn, overworked and under- 
fed body; while the invasion of a hostile country, the vast 
masses of men required and the abundant means of the North, 
made the question of supplies one of leading importance in 
the strategy and operations of the Federal generals. Com- 
pared with the Confederate, the Federal soldier may almost be 
said to have fought at his ease and in comfort. 

By December 1, 1862, more than 1,300,000 men had been 
put in the field by the North, while, it is afiirmed, the South 
had never half that number at once in arms. The entire num- 
ber of difterent men in the Southern armies during the whole 
war is stated at about one third the whole number of its an- 
taironists. The sacrifices of the North were immense and 
seemed inconceivable, but the devotion of the South to a con- 
stantly failing cause was not less honorable to its spirit. It 
is true that there were many, both North and South, who did 
not scruple to improve the opportunities ofifered, during the 
confusion of war, to enrich themselves at the expense of their 
government; and many, in the South, sought to avoid a per- 
sonal share of the fighting after having exerted their influence 
to promote the desperate collision; yet, as a whole, the South- 
ern people were disposed to sacrifice everything to independ- 
ence, and the Northern citizens were ready to assume all 
the burdens required to preserve the Union. 

The South displayed much energy, after the loss of the 
upper and lower Mississippi, of the central Valley and of most 
of its seaports, by the advances in force into Maryland and 
Kentucky. The North thought that there was reason enough 



382 TiiK Mississirri wllky. 

for tlie Confederacy to hold itself fairly beaten; as it would 
not, the Federal Government determined to subtract the slave 
element, as far as possible, from the support of the South. The 
colored race liad conducted itself with much discretion, during 
the conflict, quietly going its laborious way, raising no insur- 
rections and creating no disturbances when nearly all the able 
bodied whites went to the front. They labored at home, 
respected the families and interests of their owners, and dis- 
played, generally, their usual docility. This was extremely 
fortunate for the South, which could thus dispose of all its 
military force for active warfare, while the negroes raised the 
supplies for the armies and were employed in great numbers 
wherever fortifications and earthworks were to be raised. 

In September, 1862, it was proposed, by the President, to 
emancipate the slaves in all the Confederate States on the 1st 
January, 1863, which was actually proclaimed at that time. 
The negroes belonging to partisans of the Confederate Gov- 
ernment were, therefore, held to be free whenever they came 
within the Union lines, and were soon enlisted into companies 
and regiments and employed more or less in army operations, 
addinjx considerable strength to the Federal side. This move- 
ment gathered force and bj-eadth as it proceeded. Soon, the 
blacks of the border States were invited into military organi- 
zations, with the promise of freedom, by the General Govern- 
ment; the freedom of their families followed, to be succeeded 
by the final sweeping away of the whole vsystem by the adop- 
tion of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, soon 
after the close of the war. The conduct of the blacks as 
soldiers was as honorable to them and as unexpected to the 
country and the world as it had been while remaining at home 
to raise provisions for the Confederate troops. This modera- 
tion and good behavior in dangerous crises was afterward 
rewarded, as a reconstruction measure, by giving them the 
full privilege of citizenship — to the indignation and embarrass- 
ment of the South. 



THE GKEAT BATTLES IN TENNESSEE. 383 

Duriiii^ the autumn of 1S62, and after the retreat of the 
Southern army from Kentucky, General l>ragg, its com- 
mander, lay in Middle Tennessee, not far from Nashville, 
facing a Federal force under General Rosecrans. On tlie last 
day of the year these two armies came to a trial of strength in 
the desperate and bloody battle of Murfreesbo rough, or Stone 
Iviver, in which the general advantage was on the Confed- 
erate side during nearly the whole light of three days, and 
victory declared, somewhat indecisively, for the Federals only 
at the last moment. The Union army and its leaders reso- 
lutely refused to consider themselves beaten wlien that ap- 
peared actually the case and held their ground, to be justified 
in the end. It had the larger number, but more of them had 
no previous experience in their deadly trade. Both ])arties 
remained, through the winter, in the same region, defiantly 
facing each other, but, on the return of weather suitable for 
military operations, Bragg withdrew to, and through, Chatta- 
nooga, and the battle t:>f Chickanninga, near that place, at the 
end of SLimmer (September 19 and 20), resulted in the defeat 
or serious check, of Rosecrans, although Bragg was not able 
to recover Chattanooga. The conflict continued during the 
winter in Virginia and in Mississippi, with varying results, 
the Confederate forces, on the whole, maintaining the most 
important points, frequently gaining considerable advantages, 
which they were not strong enough to hold with their dimin- 
ishing resources and the inexhaustible supplies of the Federal 
Government. 

The great abilities and superior armies of Grant, Sherman 
and others at length triumphed at Vicksburg. July 4, 1803, 
and the whole river was soon after opened to Federal use. 
The conqueror of Yicksburg, with a considerable pai-t of 
his army, was, in the autumn, transferred to Chattanooga, 
where, in November, another great battle was fought, result- 
ing in favor of the Federal forces. But, although the inevit- 
able end seemed apparent enough to the North, the South, 



384 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 

with the most genuine Anglo-Saxon grit, would not see it. 
The Southwest, away from the Mississippi, was mostly un- 
touched, as yet, by invasion, and the Atlantic coast was still 
joined to the Valley by lines of railway skirting the eastern 
and southern base of the Alleghanies. She hoped, to the last, 
to recover her lost ground, and, in some way, to thrust back 
the powerful invasion. 

The larger features of the war were more concentrated dur- 
ing 1864. At least the antagonists had been schooled by the 
three years' conflict, and all the desperate valor of a noble race 
was developed by an opponent worthy of its steel. It recjuired 
a whole campaign for Sherman to drive the army that had 
been beaten at Chattanooga to Atlanta, in Georgia, and 
Grant had not conquered Lee, in Virginia, when he reached 
the neighborhood of Kichmond. Hood, in command of the 
Southern army, which had disputed every step of the advance 
from Nashville to Atlanta, in I^ovember of this year (1864), 
suddenly turned back to the starting point. But the supe- 
riority of the Federal armies enabled Sherman to pursue his 
special plans and still detach an adequate force for the protec- 
tion of Tennessee, and Hood was completely defeated before 
he had inflicted serious losses in that region. 

During all this year, while the bulk of the armies were test- 
ing their mutual strength in Virginia and Georgia, under 
Grant and Sherman, Lee, Bragg, Johnston and Hood, a minor 
series of conflicts was carried on over almost the whole of the 
Southern States, both within the Federal and Confederate lines, 
by detached parties, or small armies, moving with great rapid- 
ity. General Price invaded Missouri, General Banks led a 
Federal expedition up the Red River, in Louisiana. These 
were both unsuccessful. Mobile was captured and various 
Federal successes occurred along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. 
Federal raids, or detached operations, into the Southern inte- 
rior were answered by similar movements of small Confeder- 
ate forces into Tennessee and Kentucky. 



THE LOSS OF THE VALLEY DECIDES THE WAR. 385 

Washington itself was threatened by the Confederate Gen- 
eral Early, and a desperate conflict between him and Sheridan 
was afterward carried on in the Shenandoah Valley, in Vir- 
ginia, resulting in the delinite defeat of Early. Federal power 
was, on the whole, overwhelming, and only a gallantry that 
took little account of odds until it had fairly exhausted itself 
could have carried the conflict through so many campaigns. 
During the winter of 1864-5 General Sherman — after des- 
troying the shops and material for warlike supplies, which 
had made Atlanta the most important town in the Confeder- 
acy — sent a sutficient force back to Tennessee to confront Gen- 
eral Hood, removed his hospitals and extra stores to Chat- 
tanooga, and left Atlanta with a strong army, and marched 
through the heart of the Confederacy, 250 miles, upon Savan- 
nah, which had defended itself against all Federal attacks from 
the sea. His route led him across all the lines of communi- 
cation ,by which supplies from the Valley could yet reach the 
armies in Virginia; his large army of well-trained veterans 
was hopelessly superior to any obstructions which could be 
thrown in his way by the South on short notice, and his 
destruction of public stores and railways was an irreparable 
disaster for it. Reaching Savannah from, the rear he easily 
captured it, and marched northeastward above Charleston, now 
almost in ruins from a long Federal bombardment, but which 
had held out successfully to this time. Tlis operations in 
its rear led to its evacuation. He continued north, through 
the center of South and Xorth Carolina, the strength of his 
army, and the co-operation of Federal forces gathered on the 
coast at various points, rendering all the opposition which the 
Confederate authorities could bring against him fruitless. 

With all the important lines of communication in the 
Valley in Federal hands, the close of the contest on the 
Atlantic could not long be delayed. Cut oflf from supplies 
and recruits, the Confederate army daily diminished, while 
the Federal forces were ever stronger in numbers and re- 
25 



386 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

sources. The conquest of the Mississippi and of the railway- 
lines was a final defeat. The structure of the Valley made 
the union of the States and sections a foregone conclusion. 

Only lines of demarkation which had grown up, like those 
of Europe, from difference of early history — difference of 
origin, of language and of political institutions — could per- 
mit different nationalities to form on the Atlantic slope and 
in the Yalley. The mountains disappear to open the Yalley 
on the north and on the south. New York, Savannah and 
New Orleans are equally essential to the interior. The great 
enterprises of modern life, with a really homogeneous people 
occujjying both the interior and the coast, both the North and 
the South, render political harmony, such as can only be found 
under one government, absolutely essential to the welfare 
of the people. A real union once consummated, interest 
would make it indissoluble. The Yalley is ready to pour out 
a mighty and exhaustless flood of wealth. It is as essential 
to their welfare that the East and the South should receive it 
as that the northern and central Yalley should send it. Com- 
mercial and industrial forces are the strongest now in opera- 
tion among men; they are irresistible. 

These forces reqjiired the union of the whole country that 
they might reach their natural expression and assume their 
proper magnitude. In the resources of the Yalley lay the 
securities for the stability of the American Union. The 
common origin of the mass of the people, and the favorable 
reaction of the Yalley on their character and the direction of 
their development, coincided with other circumstances. The 
people were one and their interests harmonious, notwithstand- 
ing the difference of labor systems. The result — the victory 
of the economic labor system and the permanence of the 
Union — ^was natural and inevitable. 



PART THIRD. 



THE NEW ERA IN THE VALLEY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SOUTIIEKN VALLEY AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. 

The North had made great sacrifices to maintain the integ- 
rity of the Union so far as that coukl be done by force. No 
men or money had been spared; the ranks of the armies had 
been kept full as needed ; a system of extraordinary taxation 
had been devised and accepted by the people and a vast debt 
created. The burden had been great ; but, for the time, ex- 
traordinary expenditure had stimulated every branch of activ- 
ity and production; immigration and machinery had taken 
the place of men withdrawn to the armies, and there was great 
prosperity, which did not cease for many years after the 
war. 

The South experienced the opposite fortune. With the 
close of the war and for some time after, its misfortunes 
seemed to have reached a climax. During the war all the 
funds obtainable were gathered by the Confederate Gov- 
ernment for military expenditure, and little gold, or that 
which could be turned into gold, failed to be sent out of the 
country to secure military supplies. For the most part, the 
cash capital of the people had been in tlie banks and the 
Government acquired all the sound values deposited in them 
in exchange for its paper money. If that government failed 
its money issues would be worthless. The people burned their 
ships behind them and staked all on success. 

387 



388 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Tliat success eluded them; the Government dissolved with- 
out a successor, and as to cash resources they were ruined. 
The enthusiasm of the people had endeavored to supplement 
the eftbrts of the Confederate Government in the support of 
the army by voluntary aid, and still further reduced their 
slender resources. Had the blacks remained in servitude the 
planters could have recovered prosperity in a short time by 
resuming forms of industry with which they were familiar. 
Much of their former property had been invested in slaves. 
The labor they owned was their current capital ; some two 
thousand five hundred millions of dollars had been so invested ; 
it disappeared with the war. Multitudes of the large plant- 
ers were left penniless and helpless ; tens of thousands of 
widows and orphans, whose property had consisted chiefly of 
colored servants, were destitute. 

For four years war had desolated their lands and cities and 
very many of their pleasant homes; it had struck down their 
vigorous men on the battlefield or returned them wounded and 
broken to helpless poverty, throwing their families into the 
deepest distress ; there were no pensions to sustain the wounded, 
to smooth their way to health or the grave, nor to furnish a 
pittance to the dependent women and children. The conquer- 
ing government would not, indeed, leave them to starve when 
their cases were known and within reacli; but such dependence 
was a humiliation they, of all others, found it hardest to bear. 
The land remained and, wdiere the rush of war had not swept, 
the buildings still stood; but the lands were of little value in 
themselves now, the houses w^ere bare and decayed from the 
waste of war or free contributions of comforts to the soldiers 
during years of blockade, the absence of the master or loss of 
income. 

The loss of personal property in slaves was at least $2,500,- 
000,000. The expense and waste of war, the destruction and 
deterioration of property must have been twice as much more. 
Industrial development was arrested in all the South with the 



THE LOSSES OF THE SOUTHERN PEOI'I,E. 389 

opening of the war except in warlike directions. The g-round 
was cultivated for the necessary supplies of food, and some 
cotton still raised in the hope of getting it through the block- 
ade to foreign markets; this was, in general, impossible, and 
the country was shut in from the world. War was the great 
fact and absorbed most of the energies it did not palsy and 
the resources it did not dry up. Everything was lost that, 
with an Anglo-American people, it was possible to lose. Thei r 
tenacious bravery, for tlie most part, kept the desolations of 
actual conflict to the great strategic lines and the regions 
immediately adjacent, and the interiors remained, as a rule, 
undisturbed; yet, all that was left was really but a remnant. 
The desolation was great. The diversion and loss of indus- 
trial and business energies and resources, the disorganization 
that entered Into every field of ordinary activity, were equiva- 
lent to the entire loss of capital. The small values that re- 
mained were counterbalanced by a loss of business habits, by 
mental and moral depression, and the want of hopefulness that 
has been the true spring of American progress. 

Besides all these losses, which were greater than could easilv 
be conceived in the North, there were many and serious em- 
barrassments to a return of prosperity. Could this popula- 
tion have been placed in a new country with the untamed vigor, 
boldness and hope of the early settlers of the Valley the dif- 
ficulties would soon have been mastered. It was not the worst 
that everything was virtually lost, that the weight of sorrow- 
ful memory rested upon their energies. There is a vitality 
and recuperative force inherent in the race that would soon 
restore mental and physical tone. The greatest embarrass- 
ment lay in the new industrial situation. The subject and 
superior races stood in antagonism. The necessity of obedi- 
ence had been removed from the first before the mental change 
that alone could render it logical and healthy liad been oi)tained. 
It was impossible that the colored people should not Ije demor- 
.alized, industrially, by a liberty so suddenly gained. Servile 



390 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

habits could not be iunnediately changed for a wise self-control ; 
they could but be transformed, for a time, into license. Lib- 
erty could not mean to them what it meant to the intelligent 
white; it w^as, for the mass of them, and for an indefinite 
time, liberty to be idle, liberty to be absurdly inconsequent 
and changeable, to be careless of the future and to obey the 
fancies of the moment. 

Thus, there was an inevitable disorganization of any labor 
system; the blacks remained, but in a condition singularly 
embarrassing to the resumption of profitable industry. The 
impossibility of a sudden mental revolution among the whites, 
all whose habits had been based on absolute control of the 
laboring class, added to this difficulty. It seemed an absurd 
situation. Chaos was come again. The mode of reconstruc- 
tion adopted by the General Government required the new 
prosperity of the South, however, to be built up in harmony 
with these conditions. The Southern people had no power of 
control; they could not restore former relations; the princi- 
ple of equality as citizens must be regarded. 

The abolition of slavery became constitutional by the Thir- 
teenth Amendment, at the close of 1865 ; the Civil Rights Bill 
became a law in the following year; the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment went into operation in 1868; and in 1870 the Fifteenth 
Amendment conferred the elective franchise, or right to vote, 
on the colored people. 

The Southern people must begin anew, contrary to their 
habits, to their judgment, and, as they were situated men- 
tally and industrially, to their interests. They were dis- 
franchised for the time, lest they should exert industrial and 
political control and interfere with this transformation of the 
colored race from servitude to citizenship. So great a change, 
on so large a scale and in so short a time, had never before 
occurred in human history. It had been believed impossible. 
A war of races had been predicted. It had not been thought 
that there lay in humanity the capacity to endure a change so 



THE DIFFICULT FEATURES OF THE SITUATION. 391 

vast and sudden at once. All histoiy and logic protested 
against it ; but the Government was inexorable. The Southern 
people submitted, as a whole. They had the chief miseries 
to bear, the principal sacrifices to make, and must be consid 
ered as having done high honor to themselves, to the Anglo- 
American race and to human nature. 

The most disagreeable features of the situation for the 
Southern whites continued from seven to ten years in the dif- 
ferent States, according to their progress in political " Recon- 
struction." At first it was a general military occupation, 
during which civil government was gradually organized under 
the supervision of intelligent army ofiicers. Their sense of 
justice and sympathy for misfortune softened some of the 
harsher features of the situation, for the time. As soon as pos- 
sible, military rule ceased and local government was conducted 
by the classes considered loyal to the General Government, 
These included a small minority of the Southern whites; 
Xorthern people newly settled in the South ; officials of the 
General Government; and, soon, of the new citizens of Afri- 
can descent. 

All these classes had interests more or less antagonistic to 
those of the great body of the Southern whites who had 
formed the ruling class before, and during, the war. The true 
Southron inevitably felt more or less contempt, aversion and 
hostility to those whom he regarded as the usurpers of 
his rights. Many of influence among these new rulers 
were neither \-ery wise nor very virtuous, and sometimes their 
legislation and finance were really an outrage on the general 
public. Yet, acting under "Federal and Congressional in- 
spiration, they gave the necessary new cast to Southern insti- 
tutions and forms of government by the adoption and inaugu- 
ration of new State Constitutions. The colored race came 
into power under the guidance of Federal officers, of the 
Freedman's Bureau, and of Northern teachers and settlers. . 
It was natural that many unwise things should be done by 



392 TIIK MISSISSIPl'I VALLEY. 

these inexperienced rulers and that the people of the South 
should feel niucli of secret sorrow, shame and rage, if it was 
not openly expressed. In general, they endured what could 
not be heljjed in silence and waited for better days. Some 
scenes of violence occurred, some murders were committed, 
and ill-feeling, though generally suppressed in its more vio- 
lent forms, rendered all parties uncomfortable and apprehen- 
sive; yet, on the whole, the Southern people endured with 
very commendable patience and self-control. It was the most 
humiliating, painful and difficult period for them. Yet it 
soon passed, and various experiences taught them that there 
was more hope for them in their own land, with all these 
miseries, than anywhere else. Some, at the close of the war, 
believed that they could make a more endurable future in 
Mexico, South America and other foreign lands than in their 
desolated and ruined country. Some years of experience, 
however, showed them that nothing was to be gained and 
much was to be lost by these self-expatriations, and no general 
emigration was organized. In the course of years most of 
these emigrants returned and accommodated themselves cheer- 
fully to the new situation. 

At the close of the war, and for some time after, these dis- 
tressing features of the situation predominated. Many a 
matron, accustomed to superintend a large household of ser- 
vants, but unfamiliar with manual labor, was reduced to the 
necessity of caring for her famil}^ unaided. To unusual toil 
was added the unskillfulness of the beginner, adding doubly 
to the physical and mental strain. Delicate women, accus- 
tomed to affluence, and tenderly nurtured children, were 
thrown, by thousands, on their own resources; their natural 
supporters and guardians having perished on the field of bat- 
tle or in the army hospital, leaving no income behind for their 
support. 

Many a gentleman born to wealth and ease found himself 
face to face with absolute poverty, without habits of labor. 



STERN ENFOKCKMEXT OF RECONSTRUCTION. 393 

with no knowledge of a profession or liandicraft from which lie 
might draw a support for himself and his family. A com- 
munity wdiere all are accustomed to take an active part in 
hearing the burdens of life, where personal labor is the rule, 
would bear these losses with tolerable ecjuanimity. At least 
their past habits would be an aid, and not a bar, to recovery. 
It was impossible for the people of the ISTorth to realize the 
extent and severity of such a weight of calamity among com- 
munities where social and industrial life had been organized 
so differently from their own. 

The Federal Government was conducted almost exclusi\-ely 
by the Xorth — at least the great majority of the party in 
power were from the free States. The success of the Federal 
armies w^as, to them, but the first step taken. The future must 
be secured. They had prevented disunion; they must now 
take care that it should be forever impossible. They there- 
fore elaborated a plan of reconstruction with an inflexibility 
that could not but seem ruthlessness to the impoverished South 
— it would perhaps liave seemed so to themselves could they 
have been able to realize fully the Southern situation in detail. 
With the cessation of resistance they ceased shedding blood and 
confiscating property, and in those respects showed a moder- 
ation not often recorded in history; but they were all the more 
unyielding in carrying out the system of reconstruction they 
had adopted. The character of the instruments they employed 
in the South, and the brief time allowed for the most radical 
changes, greatly intensified the misfortunes of the Southern 
people for the first few years. These, however, were borne so 
wisely by the mass of Southern whites, and they accommo- 
dated themselves so soon to the new situations, that a new era 
of hope and prosperity soon began to dawn on them. 



CHAPTER II. 

CHANGES IN THE SOUTHERN VALLEY AFTER THE WAR. 

Institutions truly democratic leave a very large liberty to 
individual activity, which often appears, in formative periods, 
to threaten anarchy. There seems to be no adequate restraint 
to ambition and passion, and irregularity, disorder, and some- 
times violence, become the predominating features on the sur- 
face of society. But all American history has shown that 
beneath the surface were conservative elements of so much 
vigor that only a short time was required for them to master 
the disorder, and that they could do this more naturally, com- 
pletely and in a shorter time, than a system of external force. 

The treatment of the Southern whites was now in strong 
contrast with the theory of republican equality and it could 
be maintained only as a temporary measure. The principle 
was as odious to the North as to the South, and was designed 
to be abandoned as soon as it became evident that the per- 
manence of the Union w^as no longer threatened. A large 
minority in Congress unceasingly protested against the system 
of reconstruction adopted by the majority and so rigorously 
applied. That system was chiefly embodied in the three Con- 
stitutional Amendments securing citizenship and its rights to 
the colored race, and when these were definitely accepted by 
the South coercion was to cease. 

In actual fact, there was very little military force applied 
in the South after the dispersion of the Confederate armies 
and Government. A few thousand troops were scattered over 
the vast territory where, at first, they merely did police duty 
and acted as civil agents of the Federal Government. Soon 
they \vere withdrawn from all but the most prominent central 
points, where the smalhiess of their numbers made them lit- 

394 



RECONSTRUCTION SUCCESSFULLY BEGUN. 395 

tie m<jre than a moral force. Self-control had become so 
habitual to the American that no occupation "in force" was 
required in the South — no military police answering to the 
" gensd'armerie" of the monarchial governments of Europe. 
There was virtual freedom of personal movement, and abso- 
lute freedom from espionage. Notwithstanding the bloody- 
war and the deep antagonism of principle and sentiment still 
existing, the two sections understood and trusted each other 
to a degree unparalleled in history. Nominally, there was a 
Federal army in the South and its political destiny was in the 
hands of Congress. Actually, the South was left to recon- 
struct itself, i^rovided it would respect the three new Amend- 
ments. Political disabilities were very soon removed from 
the mass of the white population. They generally held aloof 
from political action where they must see the institutions 
among which they had been born and for which they had 
fought overthrown. They, in general, quietly turned away 
until the change had been wrought by other hands. 

There were scenes of violence, of bloodshed, of desperate 
revenge on the new-made citizens, colored oiSce holders and 
Northern teachers; but these were ncjt properly the acts of the 
Southern people. They were, usually, in isolated communi- 
ties largely composed of the rude and uncontrollable classes 
of society, or by desperate characters who improved the oppor- 
tunity to commit crime under the shield of political opposi- 
tion. These acts were truly disapproved by the mass of the 
Southern people. 

The native good sense of that people soon recognized the 
wasteful and undesirable character of the slave-labor system 
and felt it to have been a mistake. Irritation at the elev^ation 
of the ignorant black to citizenship continued longer, but, in 
the course of years, this gave way so far as to permit their 
general return to the political field of action, where they em- 
ployed their diplomatic abilities in the eifort to secure the 
colored vote to their own side. 



396 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

Thus, republican habits and traditions interposed to temper 
the violence of the changes produced by the war — to mod- 
erate the arrogance of the conqueror, and preserve a large 
portion of freedom to the conquered — from the first, as well 
as to moderate the conduct of those who had lost their cause 
on the battle field. They renounced a revenge which must 
be futile, and more injurious to themselves than to any one 
else, and soon proceeded with vigor to the work of recon- 
structing their fortunes and exerting all their influence on 
their local government. The way was prepared, very soon, 
for a much better political situation and, gradually, the indus- 
trial and financial condition of the South was ameliorated. 

The colored race also soon began to illustrate the beneficial 
influence of personal freedom. The moral and industrial 
vices of the labor system of the South so long held the atten- 
tion of the civilized world, and especially the dominant party 
in the North which took control of the General Government 
at the opening of the war, that some other phases of the case 
were quite overlooked. It was, therefore, a matter of great 
surprise to the country when, on the outbreak of the conflict, 
during its whole course and when they became the domi- 
nant political force in the South after it, the black displayed 
a singular degree of mildness and moderation. There was 
no frenzied outbreak of savage revenge when a large part of 
the Southern planters and the flower of their young men 
hastened to the armies, leaving the weak and defenceless in 
the care of their servants. Tlie conduct of the blacks in 
Hayti and Jamaica on their attainment of freedom was not 
repeated. Tlie three or four million slaves in the Confederate 
States calmly waited the hour when they should be legally 
freed, in the meantime doing their full duty to the lands and 
families of their masters, left in their care. No insurrec- 
tions, no murders, prejudiced their prospects. It was not 
cowardice, or stolidity, that kept them quiet. They generally 
understood that the hour of their freedom was approaching, 



THE CHARACTER OF THE COLORED PEOPLE. 397 

and when, in the later years of the war, t-hey were mustered 
into the Federal army by tens of thousands, they proved s^ood 
soldiers. The Southern people themselves had not expected 
from them so much good sense, patience in waiting, or valor 
in battle. 

These blacks had for ancestors, but a few generations back, 
the most barbarous and degraded of the negro tribes of Central 
Africa. It had been the severest charge of Christian philan- 
thropists in the North that the Southern people held them 
aloof from all elevating influences — that their system, which 
held them as property, tended to dehumanize what remains of 
manliness barbarism had left to them. Yet, when the severest 
test was applied to them, their conduct would have done honor 
to the most civilized people in Christendom. The conclusion 
seemed to be inevitable that the influence of their masters had 
not done them the harm assumed. Their contact with the well- 
ordered civilization of America had ripened them into men of 
a higher order than their African ancestors. If, in many re- 
spects, they remained ignorant and stupid, in others, they 
had been educated to a manly self-control and a high degree 
of good sense. This result is extremely honorable to the 
Southern people. Force of dmracter in their masters and 
general contact with them through generations had devel- 
oped much of essential manhood in the enslaved African. It 
can not be regarded as an argument for slavery. A forced 
labor system is an economical, a social, and a moral heresy; 
yet, in this case, it had its palliatives. It held a barbarous 
race, with a strong hand, in steady subordination to, and con- 
tact with, a highly civilized and enlightened race, until many 
of its virtues had been acquired. 

After the first confusion, and i-epulsive antagonism, of a 
forced liberation of the colored race among their former mas- 
ters had passed, the excellent qualities of both the whites and 
the blacks began to manifest themselves in a steady and rapid 
improvement of the situation. They adjusted themselves to 



398 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

each other under the new relations better than could have 
been expected. Not all were prudent and free from senseless 
passion and violence — but the general masses, on each side, 
displayed their best qualities to each other and made the best 
of their new relations. The steady improvement manifest in 
almost every form in the South for the ten years following 
1868, and the general quiet that reigned through its commu- 
nities, admit no other conclusion. The occasional local diffi- 
culties that occurred, and that seemed, to one outside, symp- 
toms of a general convulsion, proved to be so few, so limited 
in range, and so dependent on outside interference and 
political contests for their existence, as to prove the rule in 
the most striking manner. 

Under this general reign of good sense and moderation the 
waste of war began to be rapidly restored. The newly created 
wealth was more equally distributed andproduced vastly more 
general comfort. While the great fortunes of the periods be- 
fore the war were seldom regained, a large number reached a 
condition of modest abundance and prosperity. Many of the 
colored jieople acquired property and raised themselves to 
positions of respectability and influence. Small farms and a 
healthy variety of industries gave evidence that the natural 
laws controlling- the activities and interests of man were in 
full play and were operating wholesome changes. The abso- 
lute necessity of general industry to save themselves from 
want called out much of the latent energy of every class of 
the people, white and black, and began to introduce the respect 
for honest toil that had before been more largely rendered to 
it in the North, while active employment helped to banish the 
excessive fervency of regret for what had been lost. Thus, 
there was a growing intensity of light in the Southern picture. 

There were, indeed, many shadows that were extremely 
vexatious, they seemed, to Southerners, so unnecessary — the 
result of interference by the General Government, and by 
associations and private persons from the North interested, 



HOW AMERICANS MANAGE A DIFFICULTY. 399 

really or ostensibly, in the welfare of the freednian. It could 
not be expected that this interference, when conducted with the 
greatest care and judgment, could be looked on with approval 
by the South; and it was not always wisely made. Unscru- 
pulous and selfish men sometimes took advantage of the politi- 
cal powerlessness of the whites and the general confusion that 
too easily concealed irregularities, as well as of the ignorance 
and too great confidence of the blacks, to carry out measures 
more or less harmful. Misunderstandings, political partisan- 
ship and private passion often interrupted, for a time, in vari- 
ous localities, the growing prosperity. Sometimes conflicts 
arose in which blood was shed; but these outbursts did not so 
far receive the approval of the Southern people as to l)e sup- 
ported, <jr prove capable of growing to serious proportions. 
They, as a whole, submitted to the authority of the General 
Government and endeavored to make the best of a painful 
situation. It was only individuals, or really small minorities 
which happened to be strong in some regions, that created dis- 
turbance. The Southern public, in general, patiently waited 
for the time when it could legally set right what it saw to be 
oppressive and wrong, thereby proving itself fairly worthy of 
a restoration of all its powers as a body politic in the Union. 

N^orthern sympathy and humanity at once came forward to 
assist in the relief of Southern distress, even before the fight- 
ing had wholly ceased; and the prosperous activities that had 
heen maintained in the free States during all the mighty con- 
flict were prepared, at its close, to enter the South and assist 
in its restoration. Northern wealth flowed, through many 
business channels, into the unfortunate States and helped their 
industries to reorganize. Old merchants and planters resumed 
the relations with factors and capitalists in the North which 
had been suspended during the struggle, and obtained the 
credits indispensable to the re-commencemt of business. 

The North and the South probably respected each other 
even more after the war than before. However they might 



400 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

diiFer on political and social questions, they each privately 
honored the other with the esteem of countrymen and breth- 
ren, where only business or personal relations were in question. 
Business interest is of no party; northern capital at once 
flowed South for investment, and thousands of enterprising 
Northern men sought to establish themselves where less com- 
petition in their own line of activity promised them larger 
gains. This prejudice gradually gave way, painful memories 
grew dim, and the future became more and more attractive. 
The most valuable resources of the Southern States had not 
been developed, to any great extent, under their former labor 
system, and a great, a new, future was before them. The 
North had an interest in this thorough development of 
Southern regions second only to that of their own inhabitants, 
and every opportunity for profitable investment was quickly 
improved. 

Thus, money immediately began to circulate in the South, 
manufactures before unknown there were established, a market 
for all its common and rarer productions was very soon found. 
Material prosperity restored the dilapidated cities, the waste 
places began to bloom, railways multiplied, a hitherto un- 
known bustle and activity was noted, and the sorrowful mem- 
ories of the past gradually retreated before a new prosperity, 
new hopes and fears. 

Tlie pledge of a speedy and complete recovery from all the 
evils and misfortunes, in which the close of war found them 
plunged, was in the character of the Southern people. The 
very immensity of the misfortune had sprung from the force 
and tenacity of that character; and one of the distinguishing 
traits of the Anglo-American — one which had placed his 
country, in three quarters of a century, in many respects, at 
the very head of modern progress — was his flexibility. United 
as it was with intelligence, with resolution and perseverance, 
it made him superior to all situations, fertile in expedients 
for surmounting difficulties in the wise and practical way 
habitual to the English and their kin. 



A NEW SITUATION FAIRLY ESTABLISHED. 401 

This power of acconiinodation to circumstances, joined with 
force of character and the strong and broad g-ood sense pecu- 
liar to Americans in general, was never more conspicuous in 
the race than in the Southern States during the ten years 
following the close of the war, but especially in those fol- 
lowing 1S70. To accept their former servants as freemen 
and citizens, to accommodate themselves to a new labor 
system, to become capable masters of free laborers, to con- 
vince them that they were their real friends, and to assist 
them to a wise use of their newly gained rights and privi- 
leges, was a supreme eifort for them. The situation having 
been forced on them contrary to their will and judgment, 
they had themselves, as well as other numerous and great dif- 
ficulties, to conquer. 

This effort was substantially crowned with success at the 
close of the last of the three presidential terms, of which the 
first commenced in the spring of 1865. It was naturally im- 
possible for a free people, possessing traits of character so 
marked and vigorous, to so far forget their own dignity as to 
yield their principles to anything but conviction, and they 
were very naturally repelled from the lesson by the manner 
in which it was set before them for study. It had, however, 
been studied with careful thoroughness and mental change 
produced changes in all other foi-ms. At that period the 
N"ational Government was so well' satisfied with the spirit 
manifested by the Southern people as to withdraw all signs of 
outward pressure and want of confidence in them, as loyal 
citizens of the Republic. They had already, at various times, 
resumed the political management of their own States and 
local affairs, and were now as completely free from outside 
control as the T^orthern people. Such a result required, and 
had been gained by, the co-operation of the North and the 
South, the whites and the blacks. Their mutual eflforts laid 
the foundation of a perpetual Federal and National Union, 
rendered the more secure that the vexed questions of the 
26 



402 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

past were, in real truth, forever put aside. The political rights 
and liberties of the colored race were now guaranteed by the 
Constitution of the United States, and that guarantee had 
received the sanction of the white portion of the Southern 
people. 

If the foregoing statements, when made, seemed often too 
definite and positive, and to ignore some aspects and circum- 
stances of Southern life which deeply impressed a part of the 
Northern people, it was because of tlie extreme difficulty, even 
to an enlightened and fairly impartial mind, of so overcoming 
the want of an intimate and life-long acquaintance with the 
inhabitants of another section as to be able to judge, with exact 
discrimination and justice, the exceptional incidents and acts 
of violence that occurred, from time to time, in Southern 
society. A murder in the South was liable to be noticed 
with more care and to be interpreted more unfavorably, to be 
suspected of a deeper political significance, than one occur- 
ring in a region more familiar, and with whose general social, 
political and moral tone they were fully acquainted. Great 
changes were passing in the general mind and feeling of the 
South. In the other sections the degree and quality of these 
changes were not fully known nor easily appreciated; the 
explanation of the Southerner, who alone was fully prepared 
to judge them, was regarded with suspicion as probably 
partial or partisan. 

To most people a really accurate and impartial judgment 
of events and persons of their own generation is impossible. 
The perspective is not sufficiently extended; the view is too 
close; the reach of vision too narrow; some of the important 
relations to be considered are too imperfectly known. Besides, 
events sometimes admit of various interpretations, and time 
alone can prove, with absolute conclusiveness, which is right. 
The Southern people have erred in various ways, they have suf- 
fered and lost much more than most people outside of their own 
section can well appreciate, but they have re-conquered a lost 



CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES IN THE SOUTH. 403 

prosperity and nationality in a remarkably short space of time. 
As a section they have proved their right to be considered real 
and trne Americans. 

Constitutional changes, embracing all the features insisted 
on by the General Government, had been introduced when the 
States which had formerly been members of the Confederate 
Union were re-admitted by the Federal Congress. These 
re-admissions of Southern States commenced, in the Yalley, 
with Tennessee, which conformed its Constitution to the cir- 
cumstances by a Convention whose action was approved by the 
people of the State, March 4, 1865, and the Legislature and 
Governor, appointed under it, having approved the Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United 
States, July 12 and 13, 1866, the State was formally re-admit- 
ted by Congress on the i21th of the same mouth. Missouri 
and Kentucky were not held to have left the Union. Arkan- 
sas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were formally 
admitted to representation in Congress, at different times, 
between 1868 and 1870. The votes of the Freedmen 1)eing 
received in the appointment of delegates to Constitutional 
Conventions and the ratitication of the revised instruments, 
the Southern whites took little part in them, although procla- 
mations of amnesty had restored the civil rights of the masses 
of the people. 

Most of these new Constitutions formally abolished slavery, 
denied the right of secession, and forbade the acknowledg- 
ment of debts contracted by the Confederate Govern- 
ments. Some of them were subsequently revised and omit- 
ted any formal statement of these points, but left out the word 
''white" in determining the qualifications of voters; the pro- 
visions of the Federal Constitution, binding on all the States 
as the supreme law of the land, sufficiently securing the other 
points. The Constitution of Kentucky remained the same as 
in 1850, although some of its provisions were made obsolete 
by the amendments to the Federal Constitution. Most of 



404 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

these States made provision in tlieir new Constitutions for an 
efficient common school system of education, which included 
the colored as well as the white population, and the State 
Governments proceeded, as soon as practicable, to put them in 
operation. Many millions of dollars, in the course of years, 
flowed in from theXorth in support of educational enterprises 
of various kinds, and a new source of promise and hope for 
the future of the South was opened. 

One very unhappy accompaniment of these Constitutional 
and Legislative changes was experienced. They were sug- 
gested by the Federal Government but conducted, in large 
part, by Northern people who were either imperfectly fitted 
for that task by want of familiarity with Southern interests, 
or dishonest and heartless enough to make personal advance- 
ment a principal aim. They took advantage of the ignor- 
ance of the colored people and the helplessness of tlie whites 
to plunder the painfully gathered public funds, when, of all 
times, it Was most harmful to the desolated States. It 
was one of the cases of disorder in which superior authori- 
ties did not feel at liberty to interfere, since, nominally, 
the State Governments were re-established and Federal 
power could occupy itself only in its restricted circle, unless 
called upon to keep the public peace ; therefore freedom of 
individual action and respect for constitutional limitations, 
combined with antagonism between the white and colored 
races in the South, to open a large margin to possibilities of 
harmful action. It is a peculiarity very noticeable in various 
periods of our history. The mode of its cure illustrates a 
favorable feature of American life. 

It could only be eff'ectually corrected by the Southern 
whites; and, in proportion as the evil afilicted and injured 
them, were they inspired to earnestness in the effort to 
gain the confidence of the colored voters, at least of a 
sufficient number to give them control of State Govern- 
ments. In this way the evil would work its own cure. 1 ears 



THE FOUNDATIONS OF A NEW UNION. 405 

of painful contest were required, indeed, to bring this adjust- 
ment to a conclusion, involving much bitter party strife, with 
occasional acts of lamentable violence ; but it was steadily 
pushed forward by the interests involved, until the extension 
of the evil was stop])ed and its effects gradually nioditied. 
Thouo:h extremelv hurtful and discreditable, it was terminated 
in a natural way l)y the free operation of the orderly and sen- 
sible spirit of the people themselves. Freedom is, at times, 
turbulent, but effectually corrects its own errors. 

Thus social, political and industrial reconstruction went 
hand in hand. The violence which had required it left the 
South bleeding at every pore and surrounded with the ruins 
of her former prosperous greatness. Gradually her wounds 
were bound up and healed; the fever of passion passed away 
from both North and South; a long convalescence followed, 
but was ended by the return of rugged health, sounder and 
broader principles of policy, and the elements of a more per- 
fect union between the sections of the country. The time 
was soon to come when the parties who had met in deadly 
conflict on the battle fields, which they had left strewed with 
the noblest and best of their fallen braves, could meet on the 
same fields, to mourn together over the losses of each, and 
mingle their tears in mutual sympathy and respect. They 
had learned to know each other on a thousand battle fields, to 
esteem their common country more highly because each 
formed part of it, and had clearly ascertained how their vari- 
ous interests could be reconciled. The fearful price paid for 
the Union re-established and more perfectly consolidated, and 
for the removal of all the gi-eat causes of discord, was not 
too great if there were no other way of accomplishing those 
ends. Strong races must needs have strong faults. Their 
errors are, occasionally, as disastrous as their character is 
vigorous; but human life was not arranged to exclude error, 
and, ha]ipily, this generous race was capable of " learning- 
wisdom bv the thing's it suffered." 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE UPPER VALLEY DURING THE WAR. 

The peopl^ of the Southern Yalley had lost about four fifths 
of their property during the war, and found numerous and great 
embarrassments, at first, in tlieir efforts to employ the remainder 
as an effective base for the recovery of prosperity. In addi- 
tion, they had lost much of their best and most energetic 
population, and the stimulus of lively hope. Dark clouds 
lay on their future, gloom rested on their minds, and dis- 
couragement sapped their energies. On the other hand, 
the inhabitants of the upper Valley had gained, at least, as 
much as the war had cost them, and invested it in important 
and valuable improvements that would pay a large interest iu 
the long future. General prosperity attended them during all 
the desperate struggle — after it had been taken into the account 
as an unavoidable fact. 

Although they had formerly been largely dependent on the 
river system for transportation, the railroads had delivered 
them from it after 1850, and their activities were scarcely 
embarrassed, after the first year of confusion, by the blockade 
of the MississipjDi. Their chief trade had come to be with 
the East, and with Europe from eastern ports, and the require- 
ments of the armies had made up the loss of Southern sales. 
The West had sent about a million of its able-bodied men to 
the armies that were making such havoc in the South, and 
was receiving good pay from the Government for feeding 
them there. Their places were partly supplied by immigra- 
tion, for more than .550,000 foreigners had come into the North 
during the four years of the war, and a large part had been 
attracted to the West by its prosperity and the large wages 
paid to laborers. The remaining loss was more than met by 

406 



PKOGRESS OF THE UPPER VALLEY DURIxNG THE WAR. 407 

the increase of labor-saving agricultural nuicliinery. The free 
circulation of money had given all the stimulus required. 
Development had been uninterrupted, and perhaps greater 
than if there had been no thunder of cannon or rattle of mus- 
ketry from Kansas to the Potomac. When the war closed, 
therefore, the West had never been so prosperous. The pub- 
lic debt, which had put so much money in circulation, would 
make itself felt in the future, but, for the present, the preser- 
vation of the Union and the general extreme prosperity were 
the prominent facts. 

During the war about 1,500 miles of railroad had been built 
in the northern Yalley — about as much as the length of one 
trunk line from the Atlantic shore to the Mississippi. Four 
great lines, with innumerable feeders, extended from the cen- 
ter of Iowa and Missouri to eastern tidewater, besides the 
water route of the lakes and the Erie canal. These trans- 
ported the stock, the pork and the grain of the West to the 
l)est markets, as well as transferred the munitions of war and 
army supplies. No cordon of armed vessels beleagured the 
Atlantic ports; no international law prevented free intercourse 
with the world beyond the ocean, and profitable trade and com- 
merce went on as usual. It was well for the North that this 
ample outlet had been put in good working order before the 
breaking out of the conflict. By it she had full command of 
all her resources and could take full advantage of the openings 
for traffic and the profusion of money. 

Machinery for conducting agriculture over the smooth areas 
of the northern Valley, whereby multitudes of men could be 
spared, had already been invented and introduced before the 
war, and many establishments for multiplying them had been 
constructed even as far west as the Mississippi. To press 
their production and dispersion over all the prairie States was 
easy. Frequently one man could do the work of ten, by their 
help, and there was, therefore, ample opportunity to raise all 
the food that could be sold. The increase of manufactures 



408 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

everywhere called for larger harvests every year ; the great 
consumption and waste of war increased the demand, and 
foreign export continually increased. No class of the peoj)le 
were more prosperous than the farmers — except the army 
contractors. It was a most salutary fact and helped much 
to lay a base for the future and to oflset the demoraliza- 
tion inevitable in a state of war. The prosperity of this 
class, and the necessity of manufacturing for them, invited 
the establishment of that industry on a larger scale, in the 
West, built up the cities and towns, and furnished millions 
more of artisans to be fed at home. 

The creation of the greenback, or Government money, was 
one of the important circumstances of the situation. It gave 
a vigor of life and activity to all kinds of business that other- 
wise must have felt the impoverishment of war. As it was, 
the extraordinary resources of the Valley were drawn out, 
profitable trade was maintained, the money was scattered far 
and wide to benefit every class of the people and stimulate 
every kind of production. The actual gain in capital, and in 
preparation for future production and a higher degree of 
prosperity, must have been fully equal to all the immense 
expenditures of the war. 

Thus, when the war closed, everything was ready in the 
North for an unexampled spring of progress. Skilled me- 
chanics and laborers, in every branch of manufacture, had 
been gathered and trained; farms had been put in the best 
order; careful organization of all branches of business left no 
time to be wasted in preliminaries; and the temper of the 
people was at the right pitch for the production of the great- 
est possible results. It was as fine a situation, as full of liope 
and promise, as that of the South was sad and dark. 

Nothing could show more impressively the advantage of a 
free and intelligent laboring class, than the strong contrast 
here suggested by the condition of the sections. The unhappy 
South drank the dregs of the cup of confusion and trouble 



THE CONTRAST OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH. 4()9 

that a false and illogical policy had poured out for her. Had 
the Northern people lost all, as the Southern had done, 
they would still have had the skillful hand and intelligently 
trained muscles of their laborers to re-create capital. These 
would have been of more value to the South than thousands 
of millions of money. 



CHAPTER lY. 



THE NEW STARTING POINT. 



It is seen that war had wasted only the South, drained it of 
capital and left it helpless; while the most that had been spent 
on armaments and supplies had tended to assist and enrich the 
people of the North, and especially those living in the Valley, 

The new starting point presented features of promise more 
inspiring than had ever before smiled on that region. The 
extent and variety of its resources were evidently so great that 
no conceivable disaster could really interrupt, or seriously 
check, the progress of its people. It could sustain the loss of 
hundreds of thousands of its best citizens without losing the 
momentum of industrial advance; it could meet every possi- 
ble demand for its productions which could arise in the coun- 
try or come from foreign lands; it could so sustain the credit 
of the whole country by its boundless possibilities that the 
waste of three thousand millions of treasure could be borne 
with little difficulty; it could, perhaps, replace them by its 
surplus earnings while the shock of armies and navies was 
causing the whole continent to tremble. The war was a 
singularly triumphant test of the ability of the country to 
stand any strain, to meet any possible call. At the close of 
that mighty struggle all the channels of its industry and trade 
were full to overflowing, ready to spread out over the devastated 
South, and to employ all the abilities and facilities that had 
been occupied for years in the armies and navies of the nation. 
No soldier and no ship need fail of full and profitable oppor- 
tunities for such service as their soundness could render. It 
was discovered to have the widest margin for " profit and loss " 
of any country under the sun. This was the base for its new 
start. 

410 i 



THE GREAT CHANGE IN THE SITUATION. 411 

Up to this time the more prominent feature of Valley his- 
tory, as a whole, had been that of laying foimdations, of mak- 
ing commencements, opening new farms, building new towns, 
establishing new industries. This feature did not cease; for 
over all its settled areas and around all its northern and west- 
ern margins were virgin lands to be broken for the first time 
by the plow, openings for new activities and an indefinitely 
greater population. The filling up and extension might, and 
did, continue as actively as ever; but it became a subordinate, 
it was no longer the leading, feature. Development from the 
beginnings already made became that leading feature. The 
Valley was now ready to penetrate beneath the surface, to 
ascertain how deep were the treasures whose " first fruits '^ 
had proved so rich. The more absorbing topic was how to 
improve methods in farming, in manufacture, in trade, and 
organize its instruments of wealth so as to produce more 
largely at less cost. The prospecting period had ceased, the 
time for productive labor had come ; running hither and thither 
to make trials comparatively ceased during the war, when the 
disturbed condition of the southwest, and the smaller num- 
ber of unattached individuals rendered a steady development 
of the farm, the trade, or the manufacture already open more 
profitable. 

The people of Ohio, for instance, no longer-, as in former 
years, poured over its boimdaries by hundreds of thousands 
yearly. They staid at home to make the most if their oppor- 
tunities there. The stalwart sons of Kentucky and Tennessee 
staid at home to repair their desolations and create new sources 
of gain to replace their losses by war and emancipation — and 
so throughout most of the States. Ohio had steadily reduced 
its State indebtedness per head of its population during the 
war. In 1860 it was $6.09 for each of its population; in 1865 
but $5.13, notwithstanding the vast contributions made, under 
various forms, to the war fund ; and its Auditor estimated that the 
whole debt might easily be extinguished in seven years, while 



412 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

its grand career of public prosperity seemed but just begun. 
Similar features, modified by various circumstances but testi- 
fying to the same great facts, characterized all the States of the 
Northwest. The innumerable springs of prosperity that had 
been gushing forth from the whole surface of the West during 
the last fifty years were now gathering into a mighty river, 
broadening and deepening with every stage of progress. 

The situation was improved by the new national enthusiasm 
developed by the victories of the war and the new sense of 
unity and strength in the Republic. The institutions estab- 
lished in the Valley had been subjected to a powerful strain 
and had manifested no sign of weakness but had rather settled 
more firmly into place. The test seemed to have been a ben- 
efit, rather than an injury, and the future could be faced with 
an absolute confidence. The element of weakness and dissen- 
sion that had seemed to be forming two nationalities in the 
Valley was definitely removed, and, sooner or later, the agen- 
cies set in operation after the war must harmonize the popu- 
lation of the upper and lower basins in their feelings and 
sympathies. Soon, the wealth and prosperity of the upper 
branches of the g-reat river must follow the course of the 
waters and enrich all the South with their golden flood. 
There was a stimulus to hopefulness in this prospect which 
could not but react with immense power on the struggling 
energies of all the States; inclining the South to courage, the 
North to sympathy, forbearance and generosity; and alto- 
gether to united counsels and vigorous effort. The future 
gave assurance of restored prosperity to the exhausted South, 
of increased gain to the alert and enterprising North. The 
" manifest- destiny " of the great nation, of which the Valley 
included so important a part, was henceforth quite certain and 
all its citizens felt themselves girded up for new and more 
arduous undertakings. 

All this had been felt by the North and the Federal Con- 
gress during most of the war and was one of the secrets of 



HOPEFUL ENERGY CREATES RESOURCES. 413 

its success if not, indeed, the principal cause of tlieir con- 
stancy and vigor in pressing it. The failure to realize this 
grand future was a possibility which the people and their 
representatives would not take into account; to secure it they 
considered no sacrifice too great, and felt almost as sure of the 
ultimate success of the Federal arms at the beginning as at 
the close of the conflict. This idea united the mass of both 
the great parties, regardless of the protest of the minority, 
and their naturally generous sympathy for the invaded and 
bleeding South. 

The wai- was fought to a successful conclusion to realize 
this idea, and, having secured that end, the impulsive force 
springing from it naturally gathered weight and led the sec- 
tion which had triumphed to cherish, more heartily than ever, 
its patriotic dreams of future greatness. It was sensibly 
drawing nearer to the aim of its hopes. Nor could the South 
long remain insensible to the attractions of that hope. It 
had dreamed in vain of a separate nation. Now that the 
dream was dispelled so rudely and completely it must discover 
that it had much misjudged the antagonist that had tri- 
umphantly overcome a heroic resistance; must presently see 
that such wealth of resources, such manly vigor and capacity, 
were the allies it needed. It must comprehend that this 
reality was far better and more promising than the dream of 
an empire built on cotton and the negro; and, dismissing its 
dream with a sigh, perhaps, would address itself to this 
beckoning hope. This substantially occurred. The idea of 
recovering slavery, under any form, was immediately given 
up in answer to the earnest wish and fixed resolve of the 
rest of the nation; in its discouragement and poverty it was 
inspired by the grander views that began to smile from the 
future and the situation was improved by the beginning of a 
new and more perfect union between the sections. 

When the armies were disbanded in the spring and summer 
of 1865, they returned to their homes inspired by these bright 



414 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

visions, to aid in making tlieni a reality. So filled were the 
released soldiers of the Federal Government with this patri- 
otic enthusiasm that they displayed very little of the inevita- 
ble demoralization of the camp, and quietly resumed their 
places in the office, the workshop and on the farm, as if only 
returned from a journey. A powerful impulse within and 
about them carried them back to their accustomed life, and 
the demoralization was manifest chiefly in the looser notions 
that ruled, for a time, in public and business life, and in the 
impatience and hurry generally felt to realize their personal 
aims and wishes suddenly, and with too little heed to the 
means employed.. 

This promise of the future and absorption in active labor 
was the escape-valve for the passion and excitement brought 
from the army, and for the excessive ambition which flush 
times and great prosperity had encouraged among those who 
had remained at home. In due time it would be chastened 
and controlled by the good sense of the general community 
and the public reprobation it would not fail to receive. 

The Southern soldier, who had shown himself the bravest 
of the brave— for no test of bravery is more decisive than 
that displayed in support of a constantly failing cause — being 
overpo\Yered and disarmed, experienced, to some extent, 
a very natural reaction, and a longing to attach liimself to 
ideas and occupy himself with deeds capable of succeeding. 
He returned to build up the wastes and repair the ruins of 
the desolated " sunny South," penetrated with respect for his 
fellow of the North whom his utmost valor could not over- 
come or weary, and, perhaps, even more disposed to re-em- 
brace the cause of the promising country capable of inspir- 
ing so much tenacious patriotism. After all, it was his 
country and he was not shut out from sharing its glorious 
destiny. He would soon come to discover that the real re- 
sources of his beloved South were wasted and overlooked by 
the former system, and that free labor and a more varied and 



THE WAR AN EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE. 415 

intelligent industry alone could develop it and give it proper 
rank in the Union. 

With the return of the army to productive and business 
lite liigher ideas obtained full sway and a period of more 
vigorous execution in all the lines of development opened. 
The war was a practical education of the people, who perceived 
more clearly what they wanted, what they were resolved to 
have, what was possible and how it was to be obtained. From 
this point commenced a new growth, a new vigor of pushing 
the old lines of growth, and a new sense of capacity. 

A new era opened to the Yalley and to the nation, in the 
year 1865, and the first ten years of this era would leave the 
situation so improved, old evils so forgotten, and the scars of 
battle so nearly covered that the renovated nation would 
hardly be able to put itself back, in imagination, in the posi- 
tion it had occupied fifteen years before. It seemed a dim, 
distant, and almost impossible past. * 



CHAPTEK Y. 

VAST EXTENSION OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM. 

The first thing to be done to prepare the way for a new 
era of vast development in the great Valley was to complete 
the Railway System so as to render access to its treasures and 
remotest localities from the Eastern and Western seaboards 
easy, speedy and cheap. The Railway was the true provi- 
dence of the Valley. Its products were found to be so vast 
and so easily obtained that water transportation by its systems 
of rivers, lakes and canals was wholly inadequate long before 
the latter were completed. Corn, transported* more than 125 
miles by ordinary road^ loses its value, or profit, even when 
it may be sold at 75 cents per bushel ; and wheat, at $1.50 
per bushel, can be profitably transported only 250 miles. 
Residence at any considerable distance from places of ship- 
ment by water took all profit from the heavy products of the 
prairies. When the water courses were most wanted they 
were frozen up; delay by accident, and frequent losses, re- 
quired a high rate of insurance, and with only facilities of 
transportation by water the progress of this rich agricultural 
region must be painfully slow. 

The transportation of freight by railroads commenced on 
a grand scale in 1851 and soon came, by its cheapness, to in- 
crease the value of the products of the Valley one hundred 
and sixty times over that which they bore when required to 
be transported to market on ordinary roads by land. Thus 
between 1850 and 1860 the gold mines of California opened 
a far richer mine in the West and furnished the North with 
the " sinews of war " for the four years' struggle. 

Railways enriched the South much less than the North, 
chiefly owing to its difierent industrial organization. Its 

416 



SPEEDY DEVELOPAIENT BY RAILWAYS. 417 

inability to develop its equally great sources of* wealth except 
in one direction, for want of an intelligent laboring class and 
a variety of pursuits, left it far behind when the strict com- 
parison was made in a long and vigorous war. Yet, it was 
by means of its railway system that it was able to maintain a 
desperate resistance so long. "When this system was broken 
up by the conquest of Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Sherman's 
raid through Georgia the members of the Confederacy were 
severed and its destruction inevitable. 

During the war comparatively little was done in railway 
extension. About 1,500 miles had been built during the four 
years, in the northern Valley; but for the next five years the 
system was extended greatly, averaging 2,000 miles a year for 
the whole Valley, or 10,000 by 1870. In tlie next four years 
the increase was more than 12,000 miles in the Valley, and 
the whole increase outside of it for the ten years, a large part 
of which was, directly or indirectly, tributary to its prosper- 
ity, was about 20,000 miles. 

The value of the merchandise transported over all the rail- 
ways of the country in 1870 was six times the amount of the 
public debt, and had increased yearly, after 1865, on an aver- 
age of over a thousand million dollars, or one half the war 
debt, and the earnings of all the roads were about one fifth of 
that debt yearly. All the railways in the country, in 1870, 
had cost, for building, about one thousand five hundred million 
dollars, and it has been afiirmed that the increased value they 
gave to property— or the wealth they created, as it is said- 
equaled that sum the moment they were completed— that is, 
their existence restored, to the full, the capital invested in 
them. They increased the capacity of the Valley for devel- 
opment perhaps two hundred times. We quite lose ourselves 
in these immense estimates; but the new nation found itself 
in the vast wealth which immediately flowed through all the 
channels of commerce, business and industry, and, while con- 
stantly lightening the burdens of taxation, was able, in ten 
years, to pay off more than one fifth of its war debt. 



418 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

While yet the war was in progress the prophetic spirit of 
the people, their unbounded confidence in the great destiny 
awaiting the re-united nation inspired them to lay great 
plans, the accomplishment of which had been before consid- 
ered as vague possibilities of a distant future. In 1863, while 
the war was at its height, the Pacific railway was planned. 
This was to complete the railway connections between the 
two oceans. In 1865 about one hundred miles of it were com- 
pleted; in 1866 three hundred were open for use; three hun- 
dred in 1867; eight hundred in 1868, and the remaining three 
hundred in 1869. The importance of this enterprise was even 
greater politically than commercially. It was continuing, and 
irrevocably confirming, the idea of indissoluble union— of an 
undivided nationality. Its economical result was to hasten 
the growth of Nebraska and Colorado, on the western borders 
of theYalley; to facilitate the working of the precious metals 
in the broad ranges of the Rocky Mountains; to build up the 
ports and the commerce of the Pacific coast, and to bring 
China and the trade of Eastern Asia practically nearer the 
Valley by more than two thousand miles. Besides this, the 
moral effect of success in carrying through, in so short a time, 
the greatest undertaking of any time was, possibly, greater 
still. The American could think few things impossible after 
this experience and that of the war, and all the citizens were 
inspired to plan boldly and execute vigorously in all the walks 
of life and business. The mental force which it brought into 
action told with great effect. 

This general enthusiasm of eagerness to provide all the con- 
ditions for the great developments they foresaw was shared by 
the General Government as well as by the mass of the people, 
which it, in this at least, very completely represented. For 
many years every possible encouragement was given to the 
extension of the railway system. To assist their construction 
in the thinly settled, or entirely vacant, sections, and over the 
vast distances of the West, Congress granted, between the 



EFFECT OF GOVEKNMENT AID TO KAILWAYS. 4J*J 

years 1850 and 1870, about 80,000 square miles of unsettled 
land to the corporations undertaking the work. Sonie of 
this land was worthless and some companies failed to meet 
the conditions; but it has been estimated that nearly G0,000 
square miles would be available and valuable to the compa- 
nies. Besides this, the Government lent its credit in bonds to 
the Pacitic road for over sixty-four million dollars. States, 
counties and towns followed this example with contagious 
enthusiasm, and there was accomplished, in a few years, a 
work that might reasonably hav^e occupied generations. They 
did not see the point at which it was advisable to moderate 
their action, and where encouragement became a waste and a 
loss, involving great financial difficulty for the production and 
;business of the country. The world could not immediately 
find sufficient market for the supplies necessary to occupy all 
the railways, so over-extended, nor a sufficient surplus popu- 
lation to occupy and cultivate all the wild lands so opened to 
settlement. 

In their eagerness to accumulate and to obtain large reve- 
nues, railway organizations consolidated to secure a monopoly 
of business and control the price of carriage, and provoked 
opposition and counter combinations; excessive investment in 
railway extension, excessive production, excessive speculation 
and the determination to recover the currency from the depreci- 
ation it had sustained by excessive issue during the war, com- 
bined to bring on a serious financial disturbance in the autumn 
of 1873. Loose morality inevitably gains ground when the 
confusion of war gives a shock to the stricter habits of peace, 
unaccustomed profusion of expenditure tempts the ambitious 
to speculation and illicit gain; and these disorders no doubt 
had much to do with the sudden check to the rapid movement 
of business. Activity had become too great in certain lines, 
enthusiasm had turned to fever, and ends had been lost sight 
of in the preparation of means. 

Yet, happily, in a country where action and reaction have 



420 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

a play so free and undisturbed, the cure of evils is soon and 
naturally accomplished. AVhile the active period of railway 
expansion continued individuals and communities were eager 
to have one, or several, passing near them because they ad- 
vanced the value of property ; the yearly earnings of the roads 
averaged $10,000 per mile, and the investment of money in 
railway stocks, the opportunities for speculation on a large 
scale and in various ways stimulated capitalists, and finan- 
ciers, individuals and companies found many opportunities 
for gain. The free organization of American institutions 
provided no general control over the activities of its citizens, 
and left the extension of the railway system, as other branches 
of business, to the operation of the laws of trade. When rail- 
road investments no longer proved profitable they must cease 
of themselves. 

It became apparent in the end, that railway building did not 
really require government aid any more than other branches 
of industry, and that such aid, in tlie majority of cases, sooner 
or later served to over-stimulate that branch and found its way 
quite as often into the hands of individuals as into the public 
purse. As a general result it disturbed, instead of aiding, the 
natural course of development, and produced evils greater 
than it removed. It increased the tendency begun during the 
periods of profuse war expenditure, to accumulate wealth in 
the hands of individuals. It rendered corporations powerful 
enough to exert an excessive control over general business, 
more to their own advantage than to that of the public; and 
it helped to destroy the equilibrium of development which 
alone can prevent difiicult situations and financial crises that 
sweep, like a tropical storm, over the business of the country, 
leaving ruin and paralysis in their track. 

Yet this stimulus to private and corporate enterprise ^ya8 
far from being all evil. The initiation it gave to great under- 
takings which promoted rapidity of development and tended 
to equalize the advantages of all the sections of the whole 



ADVANTAGES OF THE RAILROAD FUROR. 421 

country, the iiainediate access afforded to new sources of great 
wealth, and the increase in the variety and magnitude of 
industrial development, could not be other than an advantage 
in many ways, and highly profitable in the long run. The 
harm was limited and temporary; disturbing rehitions rather 
than resources. It was so far a positive benefit tliat the dis- 
turbance of business made political economy and the laws of 
trade and finance the subject of a prolonged and profound study 
while industry was changing its front and its organization, and 
capital was preparing for new undertakings. The sudden 
introduction of new and powerful forccis into the fields of 
business, and the immense wealth developed thereby, had dis- 
concerted the best trained intelligence of the age; the laws 
of business and industry applicable to former times and dif- 
ferent situations were no longer in point ; fresh studies were 
required to master a science whose field had lost its ancient 
boundaries by a vast enlargement and included new elements. 
The financial reverses and business stagnation that followed 
the autumn of 1873 gave the needed opportunity of re-exam- 
ination, and an immediate effort was made to comprehend 
and control the difficulty, to eliminate the immoral ele- 
ments introduced or inspired by the confusion and disorder 
of war, and to apply such modifications to public policy as ex- 
perience and reflection should suggest. The result could not 
but be beneficial. Meantime the true wealth and prosperity 
of the country remained the same. The Valley, the seat and 
source of the bulk of real wealth in the nation, w^as least 
affected by the temporary check — the ebb-tide of business — 
her farmers still supplied the markets of the world with their 
surplus products, and, by organization, were able to apply 
some restraint to powerful corporations by whom they had 
felt oppressed, and secured a larger per cent of profit on their 
products than formerly; and, though the rush of improvement 
ceased, extensions of the railway system actually required 
continued to be made. 



422 THE MISSISSIPl'I VALLEY. 

That system had grown hy nearly 5,000 miles yearly for the 
three years following 1870. It still continued to extend at 
the rate of more than 1,000 miles yearly. Many roads became 
unprofitable to the holders of their stock while yet doing good 
and useful service to the communities through which they 
passed; and in general, after a little time, the financial reverse 
was more injurious to individuals and corporations than to 
the public at large. In this, as in so many other cases in 
American experience, the free operation of social and indus- 
trial law soon corrected the errors of governments and the 
disorganizing effects of unnatural events — such as excess and 
hurry of immigration, the existence of slavery, civil war, 
and general overhaste in improvement. All the (depart- 
ments of life are found to have been submitted to the opera- 
tion of definite laws, and to possess, in themselves, a recu- 
perative power which, if its operation be not interfered with, 
quickly reveals a remedy for the wounds that may have been 
received by ignorant or excessive action ; and this remedy 
commonly presents itself during the reaction following 
naturally after the harm. 

During this period of activity following the war, every 
part of the Valley was made accessible and obtained profitable 
connections with the markets it required; or, in cases where 
important links had not been completed, in 1873, they were 
finished subsequently. Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and 
even the Indian Territory, were brought into relations with 
all the rest of the country. 

In 1874, the lines of railway west of the Mississippi, in all 
the States and Territories to the Pacific, fell but little below 
20,000 miles; the five States formed out of the original North- 
west Territory had constructed nearly 21,000; and the re- 
maining part of the Valley had more than 8,000. Of the 
railways beyond the Mississippi scarcely 3,000 miles lay be- 
yond the western border of the Valley, and about 45,000 out 
of the 72,600 in the United States, were in the Valley itself. 



RAILWAYS AND TELEGRAPHS CONSOLIDATE. 423 

The total cost of all these railways has been considerably 
more than twice the amount of the public debt. 

This was the material preparation for tlie new union and 
the new greatness which was rendered possible by the result 
of the war. In the accomplishment of this task the railway 
was powerfully aided by the electric telegraph, which, extend- 
ing its intricate network still more widely than the railway 
system over all parts of the country, put every section in daily 
and at need, almost instantaneous, communication with the 
rest; it facilitated the dispatch of business as much as it pro- 
moted intimate intercourse, mutual acquaintance and unity 
of sentiment. 

These two instruments, the one bearing exchanges of value, 
the other exchanges of thought, consolidated the Union much 
more perfectly than the war could do it. They aided in equal- 
izing the wealth of the sections, in building up mutual inter- 
ests and sympathies, and in removing all the remaining bar- 
riers that kept them apart. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PRODUCTION OF MINERAL WEALTH IN THE NEW ERA. 

The universal spread of railways in the Vallej furnished a 
test of its capacities in many directions. The Atlantic Slope 
had proved to be extremely rich in coal, in iron, and in build- 
ing material, and the Pacific coast had, soon after 1870, al- 
ready supplied a thousand and two hundred million dollars in 
precious metals. The Valley had been chiefly esteemed out- 
side of it for its capacity to supply unlimited quantities of 
food and for giving, by these supplies and its purchases, the 
most complete support to the varied manufacturing industries 
of the East and the mining of the West. It seemed almost 
unfair to other sections that it should display anything more 
than a local abundance of resources in their own special lines. 

Yet, the magnitude of modern development rendered a 
monopoly of any one line for a limited i*egion impossible for 
any long period of time. Competition reduced profits to a 
narrow margin and made it necessary for many branches of 
business to transfer themselves to the regions where they could 
be pursued most economically. Under this imperative law of 
economy, the mineral wealth of the Valley began to rise to 
prominence with the spread of railroads, and, from seven to 
ten years after the war, some of the industries found it impos- 
sible to maintain an extensive and profitable activity without 
its aid. 

The Valley had been projected on a grand scale in all its 
features; whatever it did contain was found, in most cases, to 
be incomparably abundant, superior in quality, and to l)e 
obtained with unaccustomed ease and cheapness. Geological 
explorations had already, before the war, made known many 
of its advantages; and the great State of Pennsylvania — lying 

424 



INCREASE OF IRON PRODUCTION IN THE VALLEY. 425 

on either side of the mountains — soon found the western part 
more varied and abundant in sources of wealth than the east- 
ern, notwithstanding the enormous deposits of anthracite coal 
which laj so near the largest cities and greatest manufactur- 
ing centers of the country. The production of petroleum and 
coal across the mountains became, soon after 1870, nearly 
equal to the vast coal trade of the anthracite fields of the east; 
and the iron trade soon developed in the Valley to great pro- 
portions. 

Although most of the States of the Atlantic border abound 
in iron, which was first worked there, the larger quantity, 
purer quality and greater ease and cheapness of production 
speedily led to extensive mining on Lake Superior, in Mis- 
souri, in Tennessee and Alabama; and more especially that an 
abundance of suitable coal was to be found within easy reach 
of the ore beds. The water highways of the "West permitted 
the superior ores of the Michigan and Missouri mines to be 
cheaply transported to the vicinity of the coal mines of Pitts- 
burgh and Ohio, to Chicago and to Indiana; while the prox- 
imity of excellent ores and extensive coal beds in West Vir- 
ginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama encouraged the 
progress of iron production in those States. In 1872, when 
the point of highest production was reached, the amount of 
pig-iron from western ores began to approach one half that of 
the whole country. The rapid increase of this production was 
checked, in 1873, by the financial crisis; but it became quite 
evident that the facilities of the Valley would, in a few years, 
concentrate within its borders much the larger part of the iron 
production of the country. England has long produced one 
half the iron and steel used by the world, obtaining much of 
her ore from other countries; but the Valley, which has both 
the best ores and suitable coal in unlimited quantities, will 
inevitably, from these facts, take the lead of the world as well 
as of the country at no distant time. 

In 1856, the world consumed 7,000,000 tons of iron annu- 



426 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ally; in 1874, 15,000,000 tons ; by the end of this century 
it is estimated that it will require 25,000,000 tons. In 1860 
this country produced somewhat over 900,000 tons; in 1870, 
1,800,000; which rose, in 1872, to 2,800,000. In 1874 all the 
furnaces of the country had a capacity for producing 4,500,000 
tons— but little more than half that capacity being then actu- 
ally used. The grow^th of this industry is scarcely begun ; 
but it is destined to an enormous development. Tlie most 
promising points seem to be in the vicinity of Lake Supe- 
rior and Missouri, though they may be possibly equaled in 
Tennessee, Alabama and some other regions; Ohio and Ar- 
kansas give great promise of future abundance. Of all the 
blast furnaces in the United States in 1871, more than one 
half were within tlie Yalley. 

Of the 50,000,000 tons of coal estimated to have been pro- 
duced in the United States in 1873, about one half was from 
various parts of the Valley; Western Pennsylvania furnishing 
about 15,000,000 tons, Michigan 30,000, Indiana 800,000, 
Kentucky 300,000, Illinois 3,000,000, Colorado 200,000; Iowa, 
Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee and West Virginia 
produced the remainder. Texas is said to have fine qualities, 
and probably considerable quantities of coal, which have not, 
as yet, been very extensively worked. 

Most of the States have more or less copper, but the Lake 
Superior mines at present throw all others into the shade. 
From 1858 they have been progressively productive, until, in 
1874, out of 19,700 tons of pure copper produced in the 
country, 17,300 were obtained from them, with all indications 
of an inexhaustible supply for the future. 

In 1870 the census statistics of mining, including quarrying, 
oil-boring and peat-cutting, amounted to $152,590,000 in value; 
and of this product $80,400,000 was obtained in the Valley— 
4,300 out of the 7,900 establishments being located there. 
In 1874, 10,600,000 barrels of petroleum— nearly all from 
the Valley— were produced. In 1870, all the salt produced 



COMPARATIVE AND ABSOLUTE VAI,UE OF METALS. 427 

in the countiy was valued at $4,800,000, of which $.3,800,000 
was the product of the Yalley States. 

The product, of the borders of the Yalley in the precious 
metals has been comparatively insignificant; yet, up to 1872, 
all the regions drained by the Yalley systems of rivers had 
produced about $55,000,000, with an annual product at that 
time of at least $10,000,000, and the explorations appeared to 
be yet in their infancy. It is not improbable that the eastern 
slope of the Kocky Mountains will produce, when it comes to 
be carefully worked, at least one third of the annual product 
of precious metals in the whole country. Yet, except to the 
development of the regions immediately concerned, this in- 
dustry is of comparatively small moment. It has been af- 
firmed that these metals cost twice their intrinsic value to 
obtain, and they are mainly useful as measures, or represen- 
tatives, of value, while iron is stated to add by a thousand fold 
of its original vahie when wrought up for the various uses of 
civilized man, to his actual wealth, or to his capacity for 
producing wealth; and four tons of coal, employed in gen- 
erating steam, is said to produce an effective force equal to 
the muscular power for labor of 35,000 men. 

It is truly significant, that this remarkable region is most 
eminently rich in th.ose metals most important to man as 
aids in attaining the highest ends of the most perfect civili- 
zation and of the truest prosperity. The Yalley has unlim- 
ited stores of material for the necessities, the conveniences, 
and the comforts of man in his most cultivated state, and was 
evidently constructed for the purpose of bringing together, 
in a compact body, the largest nimiberand the greatest devel- 
opment of useful industries that will ever be found in any one 
region of the earth. 



CHAPTER VIL 

RAPID GROWTH OF MANUFACTFRES. 

But one generation lias passed since the railroad began to 
lend its aid to the development of the Republic, to any con- 
siderable extent. In 1848, but little over 8,000 miles of road 
had been built. At that time the West had been rejoicing 
over the powerful aid of the steamboat for more than twenty 
years, had invested largely in canals, and had found the 
capacity of water carriage unequal to the vast amount and kind 
of work required. The proper points w^ere not readied; the 
cheapness, speed and safety required were unattainable, so 
great was the rate of growth in production and of capacity 
in the markets to be supplied. The difficulties of cost, of 
time, of space, must be overcome. 

These were set aside by the railroad. It could be extended 
everywhere, it was so elastic; it was capable of enlargement 
to meet all possible necessities in the amount of labor to be 
done. Nothing so unified the country, so equalized the ad- 
vantages of different sections, so set aside natural difficulties. 
While there still remained large margins of profit in all 
branches of trade it promoted, it was almost as if all the 
mountains had been leveled and the far interior brought to 
the seaboard. Yet, this was a brief period, for production 
was so stimulated that competition reduced the margins, the 
cost of transport became again an important item, and the 
first consideration was to reduce it. Mountain districts 
containing the minerals necessary to the manufacturer were 
no longer shut out from the field of competition because 
no navigable stream opened their way to the outside world. 
A railroad set aside their difficulties and made their wealth 
of material available. Ease of access to and from every part 

428 



RAILROADS GIVE A FREE CHOICE OF LOCALITY. 429 

of the country difiused its industries by the freedom of move- 
ment permitted. As heat and water dissolve diflferent mineral 
substances from accidental or mechanical combinations and 
restore to them their freedom to act after their highest law, 
or strongest affinity, so the railroad gave to industry and 
trade full liberty to rearrange themselves according to their 
respective interests. They were no longer subject to arbitrary 
influences, nor required to remain wliere they had been placed 
accidentally, or under the demands of a different or more 
restricted population and smaller markets. 

The Valley was so rounded and full in its capacities of 
serving the wants of the age; so well formed and so related to 
the most active and progressive parts of the modern civilized 
world, as to favor freedom in every line. No development 
anywhere in the world has ever been so completely free to 
obey natural law; and this complete freedom came to manu- 
factures with the full development of the railroad system, 
which relieved transfer from the restraints of distance, time 
and cost. It unchained activity — rendered it fluid, so to speak 
— channels were opened in every direction, it could go when 
it was wanted, and form a reservoir for re-distribution wher- 
ever the circumstances favored. Therefore, all the capacities 
of the Valley were now at command and manufactures sprang 
up in all favorable localities. 

As will be seen by the figures of the following chapter, 
the amount of manufactures in 1850, '60 and '70 compare as 
24, 42 and 145 for the respective periods. Continued back- 
ward 1840 may be represented as 10 and 1830 as 4. The man- 
ufactures of 1820 were inconsiderable, amounting to a few 
millions altogether. The increase was still greater up to 1874, 
when financial difficulty arrested the development of that class 
of activities, in most branches, throughout the country. Yet, 
the production was largely for local uses, in the Valley, whose 
farmers continued to prosper far beyond other classes of the peo- 
ple, and the comparative diminution in volume was less there 



430 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

than elsewhere. The manutactures of the whole country, in 
1850, were very near one third smaller than those of the Val- 
ley alone in 1870. All the manufactures of the United States 
were given as $1,019,000,000, in 1850, and in the Valley, in 
1870, at $1,455,000,000. 

Such a growth has as nearly the appearance of the miracu- 
lous as any operation of natural law can have. This industry 
has a natural fixity — an obstinacy of attachment to the locality 
where it has taken root — greater than almost any other. Hav- 
ing invested capital and conformed surrounding circumstances 
to its requirements, by degrees and much trouble, it does not 
easily determine to change, and growth is apt to cluster around 
original beginnings, where the first difliculties have been over- 
come, and where, in general, various special circumstances 
favor it. The East had made it a specialty and was ready to 
increase its production to supply all demands; but, notwith- 
standing, it must see a very prosperous rival suddenly step 
into the market. In the twenty years, between 1850 and 1870, 
the entire increase in the value of manufactures in the United 
States was $3,213,000,000, of which the increase in theYalley 
was $1,213,000,000. With all the advantages of the East, 
its volume of gain above that of the Valley was but $787,- 
000,000, or less than a fourth part of the entire gain. That 
relative gain was probably largely reduced in the five years 
following the taking of the census. 

This vast growth of manufiicturing industries in the Valley 
was of signal advantage to it. The articles made in its midst 
were much cheaper — a saving of many tens of millions to the 
Valley people— while a better home market for produce was 
made, giving a direct gain of fully as much more to the farm- 
ers of that section. 

This growth in the center of the Valley was relatively much 
greater than on the borders. The advantage of entire free- 
dom in the labor system was seen in the transfer oi one third 
of the entire manufacturing interest of the Valley, in 1870, 



TENDENCY OF MAJSTUFACTUKES TO THE CENTER. 431 

to the former slaveliolding States. Before the war the resultii 
of this kind of industry were trifling in the slave States. Of 
the twenty States in the Vallev, Missouri produced nearly one 
seventh of the entire manufactures of the section, and only 
$63,000,000 less than Ohio, the " New England of the West," 
which had early established those industries and for some 
decades, with Western Pennsylvania, almost entirely monop- 
olized them. 

One third of the manufacturing industries in the Valley 
had, in 1870, sought the central region, indicating a very 
strong tendency to much greater relative growth there. This 
tendency is likely to be permanent for a long time to come. 
Facility of access, ease and cheapness of distribution, are 
likely to seek central points for large classes of articles. 
With the new, deeper and broader prosperity that will fol- 
low the readjustment of business, made during the financial 
depression, the old tendencies are fairly sure to be resumed. 
It lias been so in every case hitherto in the Valley. Its 
greatest agricultural wealth has gravitated in the same direc- 
tion as the rivers, and its manufacturing development will 
radiate from the central points. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE TRANSFER OF INDUSTRIES TO THE VALLEY. 

Many circumstances had tended to localize the manufacturing- 
industries in the East. They had been established there while 
yet the West was a new, thinly-settled frontier and very difficult 
of access, and had reached a vast development while the mass 
of the population and the general capital of the country re- 
mained on that side of the mountains; great investments had 
been made in machinery and buildings, and the people had been 
taught the necessary skill. Only powerful inducements could 
transfer them, or the recent growth of them, to another local- 
ity whose leading feature was agriculture, the almost miracu- 
lous growth of which was creating so much wealtli among 
the masses of the people, and making so many fortunes. It 
was natural to suppose that the growth of manufactures would 
— until the Valley became comparatively old in its specialty 
— be slow, and that no great degree of actual transfer would 
take place for many decades. 

Up to 1860 this had been the case. Between 1850 and 1860 
the product of manufacturing industries outside of the Val- 
ley had doubled ; within the Valley the increase was less — 
about as 11 to 6. Between 1860 and 1870, on the contrary, 
the gain in the value of the products of manufacturing indus- 
tries in the Valley was about as 14 to i — or increased by three 
and a half times itself— while the gain in the East was nearly 
as 42 to 19 — only a little more than doubled. This great 
change in the direction of the gain intimated a sudden and 
extensive process of transfer of the seat of some manufactures 
from East to West. At the same time the growth of popula- 
tion in the Valley had been only as 20 to 15; while outside 
the Valley it had been as 18 to 15. 

432 



INDUSTRIAL PKOGRESS IN AND OUTSIDE THE VALLEY. 433 

That is to say, products of manufacturing industry in the 
Yalley liad been given as about $242,000,000 in 1850; $440,- 
000,000 in 1800, and $1,455,000,000 in 1870; while the entire 
manutactures of the whole country were worth $1,019,000,000 
in 1850; $1,885,000,000 in 1860, and $4,232,000,000 in 1870. 
In the latter year one third the value of all the manufactures 
was produced between the summits of the Alleghany and 
the Rocky Mountains. The gain in manufacturing establish- 
ments was not so great. The Yalley had 41,900 in 1850; 
52,100 in 1860, and 118,100 in 1870. The increase in the 
proportion of products to the proportion of manufacturing 
establishments in the Valley was as 3^- to 2^. 

Of the manufactures in the Valley about 60,000,000 more 
than one half were produced in the live States formed out of 
the original Northwest Territory; one third was obtained in 
the States originally slaveholding, and more than one fifth 
west of the Mississippi. More than one third was produced 
in twelve principal cities; Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis 
furnishinff four fifths of this, and St. Louis — the third manu- 
facturing city in the Union — nearly one half of that, and about 
one ninth of all the manufactures of tlie entire Valley. 

Not far from one eighth of these manufacturing products 
of the Valley came from thie flouring mills — although but a 
portion of her grain was made into flour within her borders. 
Of the $51,000,000 worth of agricultural implements made 
in the United States $32,000,000 were made in the Valley, 
and nearly two tliirds of these were produced in Ohio and 
Illinois. Ohio made these implements to the value of $11,- 
900,000 ; New York $1 1,800,000, and Illinois $8,800,000. No 
other State made to the value of $2,000,000 except Pennsyl- 
vania $3,000,000; Indiana $2,300,000, and Wisconsin $2,100.- 
000. Of the $125,000,000 in value of machinery (otlier than 
agricultural), made in the United States. $43,000,000 worth 
came from the workshops of the Valley— more tlian one third. 
Much of her pure metal and some of her ores went to the 
28 



434 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

great manufactories of the East to be worked up, and some 
metal was exported. Of the amount made in the Valley, 
Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana 
produced more than three fourthc, of which Ohio produced 
one fourth, Illinois one seventh, and Missouri one tenth. Of 
the carriages and wagons — amounting to sixty-live million 
dollars in value in all the country— the Valley States made 
thirty-one million dollars' worth, or very near half. In this 
industry Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Missouri took 
the lead; Wisconsin, Iowa and Kentucky following in order. 
About six million dollars' worth of cotton goods were manu- 
factured in the Valley, not far from two thirds of which were 
made in the southern part of the basin. 

Without going into further details it is plain that the East 
has no monopoly of manufacturing; that many of those indus- 
tries have displayed an evident intention of emigrating across 
the mountains in the wake of much more than half the inhabi- 
tants of the country. This movement did not become decided, 
as a large one, until after the war, and, in 1870, it had but fairly 
set in. It was actively kept up until 1873, when the financial 
reverses of the country struck manufactures, generally, witli 
paralysis, where not required for immediate consumption. 
Yet, the West was more fortunate than other sections, be- 
cause its great industry — farming — gave more clear revenue 
to the producers than ever before, from the greater cheapness 
of transportation, and could spare more, in proportion, for 
improvements and luxuries than the other parts of the country. 

That it steadily advanced in the direction assumed previ- 
ously to 1870 is proven by the great growth of its large cities 
and multitudes of its towns. Chicago and St. Louis, with a 
population of 298,000 and 310,000, respectively, in 1870, came 
to contain, by estimate of their people, each nearly half a mil- 
lion inhabitants, in 1876, and many smaller towns grew in 
proportion, which implied great progress in the variety and 
extent of the manufacturing industries which, in considera- 



GROWTH OF MANUFACTURES IN THE CENTRAL VALLEY. 435 

ble part, supported them. While there is not likely to be any 
failure, in the East, to hold a steady proi^ress in its industries, 
o^reat o-rowth will more and }nore characterize the manufac- 
tures of the interior in directions which seek to supply those 
regions, while greater convenience of access to the materials 
used will lead to a constant pi'ocess of transfer of certain 
industries from the East to the West. 

The great city in the heart of the Valley and of the coun- 
try, on the banks of the Mississippi and near the moutlis of 
the Missouri and Ohio, which has passed so many others so 
rapidly in attaining the rank of the third manufacturing city 
in the Union, has every reason to believe it possible that, at 
no distant day, she may occupy the first place. As the upper 
and lower Valley and the region between the Mississippi and 
the Pacific coast fill up witli prosperous inhabitants her indus- 
tries must increase in proportion. It is difficult to see why 
the causes that have led to so startling a development there, in 
a few years, should not continue in operation with an increased 
momentum. 

The manufactures of Missouri, which, in 1850, were $24,- 
000,000, and in 1860 141,000,000, were, in 1870, in spite of 
the disorder, waste and depression of four years of civil war 
in the State, $206,000,000. Illinois and Ohio had less to 
interrupt and much more to stimulate them during the years 
of the war. They lost no time, labor or means in the re-organ- 
ization required in Missouri, and a fuller tide of prosperity 
had set in for them both by 1860. In 1850 the manufactur- 
ing industries of Ohio produced values given, by the census, 
at $62,000,000, which, in 1860, amounted to $121,000,000, 
and in 1870 to $260,000,000. Illinois manufactured, in 1850, 
to the amount of $16,000,000, in 1860 of $57,000,000, and in 
1870 of $205,000,000. The rate of increase in Ohio during 
the second decade was 2.22; in Illinois 3.59, and in Missouri 
5, notwithstanding the stagnation and waste of war. The 
development of the southern Valley, near the Mississippi, 



436 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the Missouri, and the regions west and southwest of them, 
in the years to come, and the singuhir extent and variety 
of their resources, with the favorable situation and mineral 
riches of Missouri, would seem to assure it a far greater ratio 
of progress in the future. St. Louis, as a manufacturing cen- 
ter, will grow in proportion. 

Arkansas is rich in some of the best qualities of coal and 
has already begun preparations to supply to the lower Valley 
what it has been accustomed to receive from Ohio and West- 
ern Pennsylvania ; Texas is said to possess anthracite coal ; 
Colorado is already producing coal at the rate of 200,000 
tons yearly ; and other regions west of the Mississippi are 
known- to be rich in that essential of manufacturing and me- 
chanical progress. The southwestern and the western sections 
of the Valley are therefore certain soon to display the high 
speed of progress in all the elements of wealth and industry 
that has been so marked in the States north of the Ohio and 
east of the Mississippi since 1850. Progress in every section 
of the United States can scarcely fail to be immense; but the 
period for the transfer of capital, of skill, and of the most 
profital)le activity to the Southwest has but just arrived, and 
the dial which shall mark the advance of that growth is 
located in St. Louis. 

The need of cotton manufactures in the South is being met 
and a certain amount of transfer from New England of that 
industry has set in and proved so highly successful as to jus- 
tify the foresight of its great increase in the near future; the 
production and manufacture of iron is gaining a solid footing 
in East Tennessee and Alabama, with the promise of a mag- 
nificent development in due time; and Michigan, so favorably 
situated and so remarkably rich in its upper Peninsula, in 
mineral resources, has given indications of a growing tendency 
to compete with other manufacturing States of the Valley for 
a high place in the front rank. Her products in this line of 
industry advanced from $11,000,000 in 1850, to $32,000,000 



RECENT AND FUTURE GKOWTU OF MANUFACTURES. 437 

in 1860, and $118,000,000 in 1870. Development, begnn along 
the Oliio, lias already reached the northern latitudes, the 
facilities and material there are unrivaled, and, having fully 
started, the Northwest will make great progress. 

There was, therefore, a new start made in the Valley in 
manufacturing industry at the close of the war. When the 
census of 1870 was taken that fresh impulse had but fairly 
commenced. It may he justly concluded that the regular per 
cent of increase had not been reached in so short a time; for 
the few previous years had been only a portion of the period 
of bea-inninifs in manv industries destined to colossal devel- 
opment. No data sufficiently reliable and extended have 
been attainable since to furnish an accurate measure of the 
later speed of progress, but they will be supplied by the census 
of 1880 ; yet, the indications of the summaries furnished by 
commerce, by the export of the products of difi'erent branches 
of industry, and various manuals of trade, indicate the full 
realization of a very reasonable expectation of immense de- 
velopment up to, and in some cases after, the financial disas- 
ters of 1873. There is also much reason to suppose that the 
arrest of activity in various lines of manufacture in the East 
favored a change of location to more desirable points in the 
West and South; or a considerable amount of transfer to the 
advantage of the Yalley; particularly in those branches which 
had nothing to hope from foreign commerce in the near 
future, but bore important relations to the whole country. 
To these a central location was desirable and the middle Mis- 
sissippi region alone could furnish it. 

It was this relation of the Valley that rendered the result 
of the war in preserving and strengthening the Union even 
more important to it than to other sections. The wide rela- 
tions, constantly growing in magnitude, and the severe com- 
petition of business reduced profit to an extremely small 
margin. A central position most convenient to material and 
to the larirest number of customers often made the difference 



438 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

between success and failure, or, at least, threatened to have 
that effect. 

An entirely free system of trade relations between all sec- 
tions of the country favored the interests of all in a high 
degree; but most of all, that which had the most numerous 
relations — the central Yalley. It must become, to a large 
extent, the common ground for economical exchanges, and 
the theatre of the most varied activities aside from its natural 
capacities for valuable production. It had, therefore, an 
eminent interest in unity and harmony. 

The specialties of the East and the West, of the manufac- 
turing and mining sections, made them its best customers, 
the largest buyers of its surplus food products, and profit 
might often depend on the cheapest and freest transfer. As 
it was the real center, capital from other regions flowed to it, 
a certain share of the industries most peculiar to other re- 
gions would be transferred to it from motives of convenience, 
and it would assume pre-eminence from its position as well 
as from its resources. This tendency is likely to continue and 
gather strength as time passes. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CULTIVATED AREAS AND FARM VALUES IN THE NEW ERA. 

The brilliant progress secured to the Valley from the close 
of the war had commenced with the second year of that strug- 
gle, when the first line of Confederate defence had been broken. 
The loyal part of the Union no longer doubted the ultimate 
result; the issues of bonds and legal tenders of the Govern- 
ment served the purpose of a vast capital supplied to the bus- 
iness of the North; and the States above the Ohio River com- 
menced a new career of remarkable prosperity. In all the 
free States a new impulse had been given to manufactures 
and trade, railways were organized or extended, cities grew 
apace, workshops sprung up and business of most kinds be- 
came unusually active. 

The eastern States extended their agriculture under the 
stimulus of high prices, and by favor of improved methods, 
excellent fertilizers and machinery increased results with a 
smaller corps of laborers; but their best lands had long been 
occupied and the growth of agricultural products became, from 
year to year, less adequate to the supply of a non-agricultural 
population that was growing so much more rapidly. The 
greater supply required was obtained chiefly in the Valley 
and on the Pacific coast. In the East the vigorous and ambi- 
tious sons of the farmer were drawn to the cities by the favor- 
able openings offered to industry and enterprise through the 
factory, the workshop, and trade. A fortunate venture, a few 
years of diligence, or a government contract, often produced 
a fortune; while the farm promised, at best, moderate gains 
to persevering toil. 

The fertile Valley, however, gave more generous promise, 
lent itself more readily to the use of machinery, and fur- 

439 



440 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

nished large returns to small investments. Railroads pene- 
trated already through and through its most fertile sections, 
and bore its exhaustless abundance, at comparatively cheap 
rates, to all the villages and towns of the manufacturing East 
as well as to the great commercial centers. The war, the growth 
of cities, the new activity everywhere, helped to build up the 
agriculture of the West. 

The increase of the Yalley, as a whole, in its acreage of 
improved lands in farms, between 1860 and 1870, was but 
28,000,000; but the 90,000,000 acres of 1800 included the 
lands of the southern Yalley, which failed to show as largely 
in the census of 1870 as in that of 1860, in cultivated land, 
by 39,000,000 acres. This loss, and its natural gain had there 
been no war, would probably have amounted, at least, to 
eighty million acres, which must be added to the gain as it 
appears in the census to show the real progress of the North- 
west. The value of farm hmds in the Yalley amounted, 
in 1860, to three thousand, seven hundred million dollars, 
in 1870 this value had advanced to live thousand, four hundred 
millions; while those values in Alabama, Arkansas, Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana, Texas and Tennessee had fallen off, in 1870, 
from the amount given in 1860 four hundred and eighty-five 
millions. Their united increase, added to the greater increase 
of Missouri and Kentucky had there been no war, should 
have been at least a thousand million dollars. The southern 
Yalley may be fairly estimated to have lost in agricultural 
values, as a result of the war — in direct waste and failure of 
natural increase — to the amount of two thousand million 
dollars. 

The actual gain of the whole country in the value of farms 
was two thousand, six hundred million dollars; of which one 
thousand, seven hundred millions was in the nortliern Yalley. 
The absolute gain, however, ascertained from the statistics of 
the several States and Territories of the Northwest v/ith 
Missouri, Kentucky West Yirginia and Western Pennsylva- 



GAIN IN AGRrOULTrTKAL VALUES AND IMPLEMENTS. 441 

nia was about two thousand, five hundred niilliou dolhirs. As 
the entire value of farms in the United States, by the census 
■of 1870, was $!),200,()00,000, tlie gain of the upper Yalley, 
during this decade covering the years of an immense and 
wasteful war, was more than one fourth of that vast amount. 
This advance was made in a disturbed period and at long dis- 
tances from the great markets, while about half a million of 
the more effective farmers were withdrawn from their labors 
for nearly half the time, and one half of these M^ere killed, 
•disabled by wounds, or broken in health. This sufficiently 
indicates the astonishing capacit}- of the Valley for agricul- 
tural progress. Railways and farm machinery supplied its 
losses and carried it triumphantly over every obstacle. The 
values lost in the South were more than replaced in the 
North. 

The gain of the whole country in the value of farming 
implements and machinery during this decade was one 
hundred ten million dollars, seventy millions of which was 
in the Yalley, although the losses in this respect, in the 
southern Yalley, were so great during the war that in 1870, 
the values of 1860 had not been replaced by twenty-five 
million dollars. There was, therefore, an absolute gain in the 
value of farm appliances in the upper Yalley of nearly one 
hundred million dollars — much more than one fourth of the 
■entire value of those articles in the United States in 1860, 
which then amounted to the value of three hundred and 
thirty-six million dollars. This investment, much of which 
was in labor-saving machinery, explains the great material 
progress in agricultural values during a period of changes so 
great and trying to the country. In many cases it enabled 
one man to accomplish the work of ten and produce a corres- 
ponding increase of income, although, necessarily, a part of 
the additional income must be spent in the purchase of these 
instruments of labor. But by their means the supplies and 
waste of war, the increasing amount required by the growth 



442 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

of manufactures and large proportionate decrease in the num- 
bers of the agricultural population, were obtained with ease, 
and the war was closed in the midst of an almost unprece- 
dented general prosperity. For this it had to thank, first, the 
generous promptness of its glorious Valley, and, second, the 
inventive genius and skill of its artisans and mechanics, and, 
not least, the capitalists who invested so freely in the vast 
lines of railway that made the results of the other two so 
completely available. 

This combination of favorable circumstances, at a most 
critical period in the history of the Valley and the political 
situation, was but one of a series of seeming accidents which 
we must regard as the expression of a law controlling and 
guiding human events and social development. All history 
illustrates this law which binds the whole race tocrether in a 
regular sequence, or progressive growth. The treasures stored 
in England and the character of its inhabitants were made to 
tell, at the proper moment, with the greatest effect, on the 
development of the civilization of the whole world. The 
course of history is like that of a river which grows con- 
stantly broader and deeper and more powerful with its 
advance. Every considerable change in locality finds it in- 
creased in volume and force ; the past is repeated, but with 
a change and in larger proportions. The immense power 
added by the Valley to the course of events must have 
ftir more effect on the history and development of man- 
kind than any previous cause whatever. Its entrance into 
history with its population, unequaled in intelligence and 
energy, marked the commencement of a period of changes of 
great and beneficent magnitude. It has onl}^ begun to tell 
on the general course of events; but the tendency of its influ- 
ence is clearly marked and most satisfactory. The character 
of its people, under favor of events which cannot be regarded 
as fortuitous, but rather the operation of a law, or system of 
laws, which secures the progress of mankind, as a whole, in a 
high and noble direction, assures the employment of its 



THE PROFIT FOLLOWING INVESTMENT IS CiREAT. 443 

immeasurable material resources in the interest of human 
welfare. 

This was the true commencement of the period of profits 
as distinguished from the period of investments. Pioneer 
labor — breaking ground, building, covering the face of the 
country with all the important features of a truly and highly 
civilized land — had been heretofore the main features of 
Valley life. More than could be earned by the people with 
all this abundance of production had to be spent in improve- 
ments. These improvements paid partly in immediate and 
partly in prospective values. They promoted the morality, 
good order, intelligence and general welfai'e of the commu- 
nities as M^ell as increased the present value of propertj'. 
But a part of their value could not be turned into dollars and 
cents at once; the remainder was necessary work saved to 
future generations, which would devote themselves, more 
fully than these pioneers, to the work of reaping what had 
been sowed. The pioneers had labored and others entered 
into their labors to continue them and to reap both a higher 
kind and a larger ])er cent of profit. 

Every generation accumulates something which the follow- 
ing inherits to add to it and transmit increased to its heirs. 
It is thus that a grand progress — an accumulating value in 
possessions, arts, ideas, institutions and character — has been 
secured to mankind. There has been a steady onward march 
of the eras, centuries and generations. Each has added to 
what it received, and the general capital of the race has in- 
cessantly accumulated. Every race, every land, every active 
life, failure as well as success, has added something to the 
general fund; some more, some less, according to their quality 
and gifts, but all something. It is hard to say who have done 
the most among nations; but the Anglo-American is not be- 
hind the foremost, and it is not easy to see why the Valley 
has not been permitted to give the most among all lands. 
England makes all lands her tributaries; but the Valley con- 
tains almost all classes of resources in itself. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE GIFTS OF THE SOIL AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS. 

The value of the farm products of the Valley in 1870 was 
over one thousand, five hundred million dollars; those of the 
rest of the country were stated at nine hundred million. But 
the prices obtained in the regions outside of the Yalley were, 
in general, one third hirger than the average prices of the 
same kinds in it because they were surrounded by markets, 
while the products of the Yalley had to go far to seek them. 
It is also to be considered that the States of the southern 
Yalley did not, in 1870, produce one half as much as in 1860, 
and also that the estimates of the census of 1870 were made 
on a year that was below the average of production. If the 
average value of production in all parts of the country 
and the average production of each year from 1866 to 1876 
be applied, the annual value of farm productions in the 
Yalley would not vary much from two thousand million 
dollars. 

In 1860, the number of bushels of the principal grains 
raised in the United States was twelve hundred thirty millions, 
eight hundred fifty millions of wliich were grown in the 
Yalley. In 1869, the whole amount was thirteen liundred 
eighty millions — the Yalley then supplying ten hundred and 
thirty millions, notwithstanding an immense falling off in 
the southern part of it. The progress made in the first half 
of the decade, commencing with 1870, has been much more 
striking. The crop of 1875 was about three fourths larger 
in the Yalley than that of 1870 ; and more than twice that 
of 1869, amounting to seventeen hundred and twenty million 
bushels — the product of the whole country being stated at 
twenty-one hundred and ninety million bushels. In this 

444 



ABUNDANT CROPS AND LOW PRICES. 445 

year the production of corn was ten per cent l^irger tlian in 
the previous year, the whole country suj)plying tliirteen 
hundred and twenty million bushels of that grain, of which 
eleven hundred and forty were from the A^alley. 

Yet, not one tenth of tlie prodnctive lands of the Valley 
were cultivated in the last year named, and the period of be- 
ginnings is so recent in most of the area that a simple and 
exliaustive process of cultivation is generally pursued. A 
restorative process, that constantly returned to the soil the 
most important elements taken from it and keeping it at the 
highest point of productive capacity would, ])erhaps, aiford on 
an average, results four times larger over the same surface. 
Therefore, the utmost that has yet been obtained in the most 
fevorable years is but a faint suggestion of its wonderful 
possibilities. 

In fact, production is so easy and abundant that individ- 
ual eagerness is constantly pushing results beyond the pruiit- 
able point. The enormous yield of corn, in IS To, of five 
hundred niillion busliels beyond the average, so reduced 
prices that, if the same sum be considered to have been paid 
for the amount of the previous crop, this excess was worth 
but one cent a bushel. An excess is, in this way, shown to 
be a heavy loss to the producers, for the cost bestov/ed on it 
before it is ready for market is large. Yet, if the producers 
lost, the consumers gained and either hoarded the surplus, 
which distributes the wealth of the Valley over the whole 
country, or furnislied the results of their own labors to the 
farmers at a cheajjer rate, which returns to tliem something 
of their loss. Probably the first is done, for the time being, 
but the last is sure to occur ultimately in some degree. The 
general result is, tliat the world's toilers live with more ease, 
and the Valley spreads its blessings far and wide. 

Western agriculture has always been on the verge of over- 
production and is likely to be so for a long time in some 
directions. Its surplus must go from one to four thousand 



446 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

miles to its final market, and the cost of transport so di- 
minishes the profit of the producer as to create great em- 
barrassments for the Western farmers. The gain of the 
hiboring and trading miilions is liis loss to a large extent, 
and sets him to an anxious search for the means of repairing 
it. This is hard to find; for if he obliges the railway to share 
its profit with him the railway system — which is his best 
ally — falls into endless difficulties which he can not avoid 
sharing more or less ; co-operation to reduce the cost of his 
p^irchases disturbs the world of trade, and creates other difli- 
culties which ti'ouble the prosperity surrounding him, and 
which must afl'ect him at some or various points. A direct 
and immediate remedy produces confusion and more or less 
loss. In a general way, it may be stated that the less inter- 
ference attempted the better. 

As the great laws that control the intercourse, the conduct 
and all the business interests of men come to be better under- 
stood they are found to echo the demand that laid the founda- 
tion of the American Republic, and has caused it to be so suc- 
cessful through its first century of existence — that for self- 
government. The instinctive sense of the Anglo-Saxon in 
America discovered that the fault of the Euro^Jcan was too 
much government — an unwise interference with interests of 
whose laws he was more or less ignorant. Self-government 
would permit him to reduce and control the evil. Experience 
has, thus far, justified his position. It is not easy, however, 
for people or legislators to arrest governmental interference 
at the right point, and American history gives indications 
that there is still too much government. 

The history of the business interests of the world fully sus- 
tains the American idea. These interests are thoroughly 
republican and demand a clear field. Business may be read- 
ily disturbed by legislation or combined action, but it is not 
so easily aided. Its laws are self-executing and operate with 
full effect onlv when left to their freest action. Assistance, 



TIIK DIKFIC'ILTIES ARISING FROM OVKK-l'KODUCTION. 447 

offered with the best motives, often iiitrouuees confusion; 
restraint produces more or less paralysis in some part of the 
machinery and increases the evil. All dei)artments of busi- 
ness have, when not unnaturally restrained, a healthy power 
of restoring lost equilibrium and of reducing to due and 
moderate limits any excessive action. 

So the misfortunes arising from the excessive productive- 
ness of the Yalley are to be most readily overcome by leaving 
its agricultural interests to self-government. Left free to 
work the remedy, they will, sooner or later, produce a har- 
mony and prosperity which no effort at regulation could 
reach. 

Over-production in certain crops tends to awaken attention 
to other varieties whose products are in demand. If one crop 
does not pay for raising, the efforts of the farmer are turned 
to another that will, by the certain law of personal interest. 
This has a somewhat narrow play, being restricted by climate 
and soil; yet great changes are sometimes produced in lini- 
it*ed periods, and the inventive and enterprising genius of the 
American can be relied on to secure the wndest possible range, 
for this means of enlarging variety of production of which 
tlie case admits. 

The increase of the non-agricultural classes in the Valley 
— enlaro-ino- its market within its own boundaries — we have 
seen to be an actual process of enlarging profits of consider- 
able magnitude between 1860 and 1870. It was commenced 
by causes that must operate more and more powerfully, within 
certain limits, for a long time. The rapid gathering of a man- 
ufacturing and trading population in a part of the cities and 
towns of the West has been one of its most marked features 
since the war, and never more so, perhaps, than in the three 
years following 1870. Somewhat modified by the financial 
iembarrassment of 1873 and later, it can not well fail to become 
a permanent feature of certain regions of the Valley. 

It is probable, even, that the more moderate and steady 



448 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

prosperity following that depression, and the great compe- 
tition, which renders comparatively small differences in cost 
of importance to the otherwise slight margin of profit, will 
hasten the transfer of many branches of industry to the most 
suitable points of this favored region. As population gathers 
on the Pacific Slope and spreads through the valleys and basins 
of the broad range of the Rocky Mountains, as the southern 
basin of the great Yalley grows more prosperous; and as the 
wide reo-ions of the Northwest become populous, the central 
States of the Valley will fill up with manufacturers and traders 
whose customers are found in all these regions. The business 
of the country, within certain limits, will seek it as the most 
desirable location for far-reaching enterprises. 

All this will help to solve the farmer's problem and enable 
him to sell cheap at a good profit. His customers will cxm- 
stantly increase at his doors. Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, 
Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and a thousand 
other cities and towns, will rival the manufacturing centers ^of 
the East, and might far outgrow tliem did not the vast com- 
merce of the Atlantic stimulate them so powerfully. The 
home market will grow ever larger, although better methods 
of farming and larger cultivated areas are sure to keep pace 
with it. 

The spasmodic expansion of the railway system, between 
1865 and 1873, will not occur again. It opened so much new 
and remarkably rich agricultural territory tliat required little 
labor to develop that the equilibrium was destroyed. The best 
lands have been reached, the sudden gusli of the unsealed foun- 
tain will settle into a steady flow, whose measure can be cal- 
culated and brought within the operation of tlie known laws 
of trade. Increase in the areas cultivated and the averaga 
production will be easily calculable and the body of clear- 
sighted and intelligent agriculturists, applying these same 
laws, under pressure of their personal interests, will not expe- 
rience the unmanageable difticulties of the past. 



FUTURE OF AGRICULTUKE IN DIFFP:RENT STATES. 449 

At the commencement of 1876 a general estimate of the 
value of animals in connection with agriculture in the United 
States gave tlie Valley, in round numbers, an investment of 
one thousand million dollars, and outside of it six hundred 
million dollars. The average value of these animals outside 
the Valley was much more than in it. Their whole number 
in the Valley was about forty-four million and out of it only 
a little over twenty million — not one half as many. 

The statistics of crops in 1875 afford some interesting con- 
clusions regarding the future of agriculture in different parts 
of the Valley. As the counti-y advances and competition 
becomes closer, each different region devotes itself more and 
more to the cultivation of those crops to which it is best 
adapted and from which it can obtain the largest per cent of 
clear profit. Four States produced more than one third of all 
the wheat raised in the whole country and but little less than 
half of that raised in the whole Valley — Illinois, Iowa, "Wis- 
consin and Minnesota. They are likely in the end to raise 
two thirds of the wheat crop of the%country, since the relative 
(juantity increases with them and diminishes in the other 
States. 

Three States — Illinois, Iowa and Missouri produced more 
than one half the corn grown in the whole Valley, and with 
Kansas are likely to produce, in future, nearly two thirds of 
the corn crop of the country. The southern part of the 
Valley is likely to produce more than one half of the re- 
mainder. 

Tlie cotton crop must always take the lead in Alabama, 
Mississippi and Arkansas ; sugar in Louisiana ; Texas, but 
slightly developed as yet, is singularly fortunate in rising 
from the sub-tropical gulf coast through all gradations to 
very near the temperate climate of the upper part of the 
Valley, and is destined to acquire immense and various agri- 
cultural wealth; Tennessee and Arkansas are similarly favored 
within a smaller range; Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Mith- 
29 



450 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

igan seem destined to miscellaneous productions of food for 
the great manufacturing population that will soon be gath- 
ered in them. The upper Missouri, as well as the upper 
Mississippi, will devote itself largely to the cultivation of 
wheat. 

The whole agricultural capabilities of the Valley lying west 
of the western boundary of Missouri are sure to be required, 
at no distant day, and in all the future, to supply the large 
mining and manufacturing population that will gather along 
the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Missouri, south of 
its river, and Arkansas will require more than their own food 
supplies to sustain the same classes gathered in their limits, 
and the cereals of the southern Yalley will never fully supply 
their own population. Therefore, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, 
Minnesota and Texas will supply almost entirely the wants 
of the East and the foreign exports of food. Indeed, before 
the close of the second century of American Independence, 
the Yalley will scarcely be found, as now, too large and too 
bountiful in its food sujDplies, though they were multiplied, 
as is likely, two hundred fold. 



CHAPTER XI. 

COMPARISON OF AGRICULTURE AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. 

The influence of America lias considerably changed the des- 
tinies of the workl by developinf^^ character, by working out 
high ideals, and by emancipating business from false and re- 
strictive principles. In no particular has it been greater than 
in its effect on the welfare of a^-riculture and the airriculturist. 
The ease with which traders and manufacturers could com- 
bine led to the first successful efforts of the common people — 
the world's reliance as workei's — to resist the despotism of 
royal and aristocratic power. The result was the commercial 
Republics of Southern Europe, the Communes of France and 
the Free Cities of Germany. The increase of wealth among 
the people and the power it gave soon added another to the 
ruling class. 

But these classes, with the traders and craftsmen added, were 
still small compared with the masses of the people; the spirit 
of the aristocratic classes descended among tradesmen and man- 
ufacturers, and a small part of them soon learned to monopolize 
the fruits of other men's labors. As the feudel gentry made 
and kept the laborers on the lands serfs, so these plebeian 
capitalists reduced the operatives, who created their wealth for 
them, to semi-slavery. It was not till the masses of a nation 
coidd, in some way, be made capitalists and pernumently inde- 
pendent that the combined oppression of position and wealth 
could be broken. The industries of Europe commenced a good 
work but they were unable to complete it; for ])ower in the 
industrial world tended to concentrate in a few hands. I nstead 
of enlarging popular liberties these few joined with the royal 
and aristocratic chisses to keep the remainder of the people on 
a common level of helpless servitude. The powerful classes 

451 



452 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

united to control the fate of the hiboring classes and could 
oblige them to accept the smallest reward for their labor on 
which they could contrive to live while they themselves ap- 
propriated the mass of profit. Republics, Communes and 
Free Cities, in general, gave up independence, in the course 
of time, to concentra.ted authority. It was the aristocracy of 
commercial wealth that so bravely and successfully resisted 
the whole power of Spain and establislied the United Nether- 
lands; but, independence secured, they did not tend toward a 
true democracy and drifted back to a centralized government. 
Switzerland maintained an imperfect republic from its citizens 
beinglargely agricultural. The lower classes were united with 
an aristocracy which engrossed a large share of ])ower in tiie 
government. 

In colonial America most of the inhabitants were a^ricul- 
turists, and so the citizens of the States have ever continued 
to be. That this has continued to be so has been chiefly due 
to the Yalley, and the breaking down of class rule in America 
luis hastened, by centuries, the political enfranchisement of 
the world. The Yalley yielded its wealth to the laboring 
millions. The farmers who fought through the war of the 
Revolution and framed the institutions of the new nation 
allowed the widest latitude to acquisition and political influ- 
ence; so that personal independence, intelligence and wealth, 
first of all countries, became the inheritance, in tlie United 
States, of the producing classes, and, from its larger numbers, 
of the class engaged in agriculture. The nation grew into 
greatness and power from' free agriculture as a principal base. 
The significance of the result is illustrated by the recent his- 
tory of France. Its land laws were changed during its terri- 
ble revolution, and its peasants gradually became proprietors. 
In the course of time prosperity and intelligence spread widely 
among the people. Its ability to bear reverses, from this fact, 
has recently been the astonishment of the world, and all its 
monarchical parties combined could not overthrow a republic 



PREPONDERANCE OF AGRICULTURE. 453 

which sprung up in the crisis of the greatest cahimity of its 
history. 

The most hopeful feature of tlie America of the future is 
the general tendency of the number of hmcl holdings in the 
United States to increase. The cases in which large accumu- 
lations of land are made by individuals are exceptional. It 
is, as a rule, the small or moderate sized farms that are 
most profitable. Too much hind is apt to ruin its owner. As 
in all other things, so in this, the Valley is impartial and 
promotes general progress. As if by a settled law, it has uni- 
formly discouraged monopolies, nor does there seem to be any 
reason to suppose there will be a change in any future which 
can now be foreseen. The South lost its "Cause " for disre- 
o-ardingthis principle and allowing its agriculture to favor a 
kind of monopoly of the soil and its productions by a contin- 
ually decreasing class — that is relatively decreasing. Natural 
law has a firm control of the Yalley and of the political econ- 
omy of the nation through it. It demands free labor, declines 
to encourage a servile class to develop its resources, and, if 
labor must be hired, requires that it be honest, hearty and 
interested. These tendencies, founded in the general situa- 
tion, are far better than agrarian laws and foirly assure the 
intelligence and independence of all future generations. The 
farmer leads a life too healthy, makes his gains too naturally, 
is too self-dependent to become corrupt and the class will, 
undoubtedly, always be strong enough to control the corrup- 
tions of the other classes. 

Agriculture has always been the ruling industry in the 
country by the amount of wealth it produced, and notwith- 
standing the immense development of other industries, it has 
ever kept its distance ahead of them. As the summaries of 
production have been carefully com])iled only in later years, 
the point may be illustrated by studying the data of foreign 
exports for tlie last fifty years. Between 1S25 and 1830, the 
annual average of agricultural exports was $50,500,000. 



454 THE MISSISSIPPI valley. 

Other exports were inconsiderable and continued to be so even 
down to the present, never rising much above twenty -five per 
cent and usually falling much below it. Lately, since mining 
and manufacturing have developed to unusual proportions, 
the values they send abroad by many new channels are still 
less than twenty per cent of the whole. In 1874, agricultural 
exports were valued at $548,300,000 —nearly tenfold the 
earlier sum. In 1875 it was $478,700,000 ; yet this smaller 
6um was equal to four dollars for every acre of land improved 
in the Valley. 

The amount of export per liead of the whole population 
of the United States was $4.20 in 1825, and in 1875 more 
than double that amount for the vastly-increased population, 
while the annual average of export from 1870 to 1875 was 
about $16 per head of all the population of the Valley, or an 
average of about $70 for each farm in the Valley. 

Cotton, though increasing sixfold in amount since 1830, 
then formed fifty-five per cent of all the exports. In 1874, 
it was but 39 per cent. The Valley States produce four fifths 
of all tlie cotton and more tlian the amount exported ; and, 
since the agriculture outside the Valley does not supply the 
population of those regions, we may consider all these exports 
as being A'irtually from the Valley. 

Agricultural exports to foreign countries have steadily 
gained on the increase of population in the whole United 
States by an average per head of about one dollar and twenty- 
five cents for each ten years since 1825; and we have reason 
to believe that the increase will be still more rapid in future. 
The requirements of the populations of Europe beyond their 
home supplies of food increase year by year. Steam and the 
telegraph have consolidated the business of the civilized 
world, and a strong competition requires that, for a complete 
and permanent success, the great mass of each of the indus- 
tries shall be carried on chiefly in the region most favorable 
to it, and where the facilities are so superior that the largest 



THE INDUSTlilES AND THE GROWTH OF CITIES. 455 

quantity may be produced of tlie best material and at tlie 
cheapest rate. As the Valley is the locality where the most 
important foods can be produced by the largest use of 
machinery, and in unlimited quantities, it is sure of supplying 
the increasing demands of the general market. 

The proportion of population gathered into cities — and 
therefore withdrawn in nearly the same ratio from agricul- 
tural occupations — has steadily increased, in Europe and in 
the United States, during the whole course of the present 
century. In ISOO, about one thirtieth of the people of the 
Republic lived in cities; in 1840, one twelfth; in 1850, one 
eighth; in 1860, one sixth; and in 1870, more than one fifth. 
The use of improved agricultural machinery and implements 
vastly increases the power of production while allowing the 
proportionate number of producers to diminish. 

This tendency has greatly aided to solve the problem of the 
Western farmer and will continue to do so by the accummula- 
tion of a non-agricultural population in it. It is not proba- 
ble, however, that this state of things will continue when the 
country and the world have adjusted themselves to the new 
conditions introduced by steam machinery. They diminish 
the comparative numbers required in all the industries and 
probably a fairly stable equilibrium will soon be reached, and 
it seems not improbable that reforms in economic and social 
science will ultimately reduce the unhealthy concentration of 
hundreds of thousands of people on a few square miles. 
"When the laws of material prosperity are well understood 
and in full operation there will be abundant opportunity for 
progress in sanitary science. The agricultural population will 
then increase. 

The product of all the mining industries in 1870 was about 
$152,600,000, and probably rose later to $200,000,000 or 
more; while agricultural products reached very near $2,500,- 
000,000 and later, probably, to fully $3,000,000,000. All the 
mineral treasures, therefore, were but one fifteenth of the 



456 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

agricultural in value, nor is that pr(jportion likely to be 
exceeded. Goal, iron and many other minerals will be pro- 
duced in ever-increasing- quantity, but the gifts of the soil 
are very sure to grow in equal ratio. All the precious metals 
produced in the United States since 1848 have been estimated 
at $1,500,000,000, or about one half the agricultural income 
of a single year. The best gold mine is the soil of the ritih 
and beautiful Yalley. 

Manufactures furnish a large class of growing industries 
which produce enormous results. They, however, use the 
materials of the mines and the products of the soil which do 
not nearly double in value, on the average, in the change they 
undergo. The value of manufactured articles, in 1870, was 
$4,230,000,000 ; of this the crude material was worth $2,480,- 
000,000; leaving $1,740,000,000 of value added as the true • 
product of manufacture. As that estimate was made in a 
period of exceptional prosperity, of money inflation and high 
prices, we may ])robably be justified in considering the annual 
average for the decade following 1870 as $1,500,000,000— not 
greatly exceeding one half the results of agriculture. 

In the new era, so full of enthusiastic enterprise, that fol- 
lowed the stress and strain of the civil war, American genius 
and skill proved themselves, in the line they followed, supe- 
rior to the long and minute training of the European artisan; 
and the generous soil, with machinery and railroads to reduce 
the costs of production and transportation, enabled America 
to greatly enlarge her trade with Europe. The increase of 
exports, in the ten years following 18G8, over the previous 
decade, was one hundred and Jtfty -three per cent\ and of the 
$680,680,000 of entire export in the last year of this decade 
$592,470,000 were agricultural products, leaving less than 
$90,000,000 as the export of manufactures and other mate- 
rials, or less than fifteen per cent. Yet, manufactures are so 
largely supplying our own country that less and less are im- 
ported every year. 



CHAPTER XII. 

COMMERCE ON THE KIVEES AND LAKEvS. 

No large region in the world has been so favored as the 
Mississippi Vallej in natural commercial highways except 
the countries lying about the Mediterranean sea. There the 
character of the outlines, the relations of the regions to each 
other, and the general peculiarities of the separate countries, 
in themselves, indicated that it was the office of the water high- 
way that linked them together to promote the mutual inter- 
course of numerous small nations and thereby favor their 
progress in civilization. It separated them as well as joined 
them; it formed a community of nationalities which were to 
learn from and stimulate each other. It did not favor the for- 
mation of a single nation out of the whole. Contact could 
not be close, intimate and permanent enough for that. Yet, 
the commerce of the great sea, bordered by three continents, 
brought about the unity and progress from permanent diver- 
sity of elements that the times and the interests of humanity 
demanded. 

The connections instituted by the water highways of the 
great Valley tended to unify the human development and its 
material progress. The united river system, the level surfaces 
and gentle slopes made it impossible to separate the interests 
of one section from those of others or allow isolation. They 
must mingle as do their waters. The great interior seas of the 
nortliern border, with their eastern outlet, pointed significantly 
to community of interests and close relations with the Atlantic 
Slope, and to commerce with Europe. The whole character 
of the northern basin of the Yalley both adapted it to such 
relations and invited the immigration of the vigorous nations 
of the temperate climate. It oflered them the occujiatioiis, 
; 457 



458 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, 

the climate and the products witli whicn they were most 
familiar, which promised them the largest degree of comfort 
and the greatest measure of prosperity. That which had been 
proposed by nature did not fail to be realized in history; the 
isolation produced by distance and intervening wildness gave 
the desired continental, or peculiar American, tone to the 
population by the vigor with which this fine region reacted 
on the pioneers; and eastern relations then became the pre- 
dominant ones with the upper Valley. After the Erie and 
Welland canals had opened the channels to Atlantic ports 
commerce from the upper Ohio and the Northwest flowed 
powerfully in that direction, and the railroads were afterward 
a marvelous success because it was the natural direction. 

This course of the commerce of the most fertile and tem- 
perate part of the Yalley weakened relations with the southern 
basin remarkably. It left the South, with its unthrifty labor 
system, almost to itself. Had Florida been left oif the con- 
tinent the comparative f^ite of New York and New Orleans 
would have been different; and a similar result — perhaps a 
more significant one— would have followed had the Alle- 
ghanies continued their full development through New York 
and confined the waterways of the northern Yalley to outlets 
by the Mississippi River. 

Thus, the Yalley has two parts with an important difference 
in their relations. Historical events, or the great industrial 
growth of the free States, developed the Northwest very much 
sooner than the lower, or central, Yalley. Its value was ap- 
parent, from the first, as the most promising field of labor 
mankind had yet inherited, and the thriftiest and most intel- 
ligently industrious of the nations at once set to work to 
make the most of it. The railroad came to the help of steam 
at the rigJit time and pushed its growth to the most remark- 
able height. 

But the course of the streams and the relations produced by 
the Gulf, thrown into shade for the time, must assert their 



TRANSPORTATION ON THE LAKES AND RIVERS. 459 

power sooner or later. It was the misfortune of the Southern 
Confederacy and its labor system that tlie lake system and the 
railroads rendered the upper Valley, with its great prepon- 
derance of growth on the Northeast, tolerably independent of 
the Mississippi and the Gulf. Had the lower Valley, at that 
time, opened the sources of her power and wealth as fully as 
the upper the result must have been more or less difierent. 
The misfortune of having slavery in the South, and the want 
of development in the countries with which the Gulf naturally 
associated it, left it weak in population and resources. Its 
hour has not, even yet, come, and the commerce of the rivers 
has given but a faint prophecy of its destiny. It is only a 
question of time, however, which the force of natural rela- 
tions renders absolutely certain. 

The great and sudden development of the railroad system 
broke in upon the slow movement that, between 1804 and 
1850, w^as pushing forward the'interests of the lowei- Valley 
and deferred its rise to its due prominence at least half a cen- 
tury. The general data of commerce on the lakes and rivers 
for different periods are very expressive. 

The whole number of steamboats built for the western and 
southern rivers, from 1819 to 1829, included a capacity of 
56,000 tons. In 1817, all the boats then floating the trade 
of the Ohio were estimated to have a ca])acity of 2,000 tons 
annually. The capacity must have been 70,000 in 1830. The 
trade on the Great Lakes was chiefly connected with furs 
or the transport of goods for Indian traders, prior to 1825. 
when the Erie canal opened a channel for the transit of com- 
merce to the Hudson River. About 20,000 tons of carrying 
capacity was then employed for some years, chiefly in the 
transport of emigrants and their goods to the regions near 
the lakes. The commerce of the lakes and canals began, after 
1835, to grow rapidly. The Ohio had been connected, by two 
canals across the State of thatname, with Lake Erie. By 18-10 
the State of Ohio exported, by canals and Lake Erie, nearly 



460 THE MISSIISSII'PI VALLEY. 

4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and in 1S50 near 1"2,000,000 
bushels. In 1842 the steaml)oat tonnage of the lakes and 
rivers was 126,000, and iiic.liiding tlatboats, barges and sail- 
ing vessels about 150,000. The steam marine of the lakes 
and rivers, in 1851, was reported at 765 vessels, with a tonnage 
capacity of 204,725. The ocean coast (Atlantic and Gulf) 
steam marine at this time comprised 625 vessels, of 212,500 
tonnage capacity. The values transported on the lakes in 
1851 were, by careful estimate fur that year, stated at $326,- 
500,000. Estimates for the trade of the rivers of the Valley, 
for 1850, made it amount to $350,000,000. This would give 
the entire amount of lake and river trade, in 1851, at very 
near $700,000,000. 

As no absolutely accurate figures were obtainable, in those 
days, the amount of values transported can only be approx- 
imated. The perfectly free and unembarrassed internal 
commerce of this liappy region enjoys a rare immunity from 
government interference. The amount of commercial ex- 
changes has been made note of, however, by boards of trade 
in later times, and by records of tonnage transported on rail- 
roads. Values of property are, however, matters of estimate 
still,altliougli extended experience lias given them fair accuracy. 
At this time railroads entered largely into internal com- 
merce and quite changed the fate of waterways — both river 
and lake. 

In 1876, the amount of property annually transported on 
railroads in the United States was estimated at $10,000,000,000 ; 
that conveyed in vessels on the lakes and rivers at $750,000,000; 
and on canals at $500,000,000; which carries up the sum of 
the values transported on these internal public highways to 
$11,250,000,000. 

This intimates that, on the whole, the commerce of the 
rivers and lakes continued about the same for twenty-five 
years; the entire immense gain during that time being ab- 
sorbed by the railroad system. For this there were many 



COST OF CAKRIAGE BY WATER AND BY RAILWAYS. 401 

reasons. The capacity of water transport was limited at the 
eastern side of the Valley by the necessity of using canals ; 
greater speed and elasticity of accommodation was found in 
the railroads, combined with great cheapness where an im- 
mense business was concerned ; only that system could 
accommodate trade at all seasons; and the bars at the moutli 
of the Mississippi, the heated waters of the gulf, and the 
perils of the Atlantic coast, with the length of the route, 
turned the vast products of the northern Valley eastward by 
rail. 

Other things being equal, water transportation must be 
cheapest for gross freight which is not required to hurry. 
The value of all the shipping required to accommodate a 
foreign commerce amounting annually to about $1,300,000,000 
has been estimated at $200,000,000; while the cost of all the 
railroads, conveying values ten times as great, is stated at 
about $4,500,000,000, or more than tioentij-two times as much, 
and the annual losses and repairs required are many times 
greater in proportion. While there were large margins to 
permit disregard of this greater dearness of railroad trans- 
portation and other imperative reasons for overlooking the 
water routes, the rivers and lakes were necessarily neg- 
lected. It is, however, apparently but a question of time 
when their fullest use will be resumed. 

It is a constant law, arising from the imperfection of hu- 
man wisdom and foresight, that business shall tend to lose 
its equilibrium — to fall into excesses that derange it greatly. 
There is another law, however, that takes care for its read- 
justment from time to time. It is like machinery that should 
be in the long run self-adjusting, but permits disturbances to 
accumulate to a certain point before the restorative process 
is commenced. These periods of readjustment of disturbed 
balances are commenced by what is called a financial crisis, 
and while the restorative work is going on the machinery 
moves languidly. It usually requires some years of depres- 



462 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

sion to conquer the difficulty, but wlien it is overcoiue there 
is a new series of situations; harmony is more exact and a 
fresli period of great prosperity follows. • During the periods 
of oscillation, the particular laws more especially violated be- 
come clearer; men learn what they are and how to avoid their 
penalties, and so progress goes on. In due time these dis- 
turbances will become more rare and, perhaps, in the distant 
future will cease altogether. 

There has been vast loss on railroads in the Valley because 
of their excessive cost and the inability of their business to 
meet, immediately, all the conditions of corporate prosperity. 
Greater economy will be employed in the end, and they will, 
perhaps, be confined to the kinds of transportation that will 
pay best. Yet they now pay in some form and public aid 
comes, very largely, to the rescue of individual capital. But 
a gradual revision of methods and change of economy must 
be made when large new sources of wealth cease to be found 
and waterways, which transport in larger masses with less 
capital and cost for repairs, will lend all the aid to commerce 
of which they are capable. The amount of trade movement, 
vast as it now seems, is but a trifle to what it will be in years 
to come, and while railroads will continue to multiply, they 
will require the aid of every available water channel to keep 
the passages to and from the Valley from choking up. 

It is higlily probable that the true growth of commerce on 
the lakes and rivers has not yet commenced. From 1820 
to 1850 it was a mere trial; after 1850 it was continued as a 
collateral of railroad transportation, and so it still remains. 
Its future may be supposed to have the massiveness and grand 
proportions which the lakes, the rivers and the Gulf bear to 
the Valley whose uses they were designed to serve. The uses 
to which natural forces were destined may lie unimproved 
while the corresponding development of mankind and their 
interests fail; but still these forces are a prophecy of what is 
yet to be, and their time of service will ultimately come. 



THE FUTURE OF WATER-WAYS. 463 

These valuable natural channels wnll some day ])ear the heavy 
burdens of commerce and the railways will transport its lighter, 
more costly, frail and less bulky materials, and collect from 
the interiors, to the streams, the general fruits of industry. 
All obstructions in the river channels will be set aside, ani])le 
outlets from the lakes eastward will be provided, and scores of 
billions of value in merchandise will be found floating out of 
and into this fruitful region. 

But this great result has still, apparently, to wait for gener- 
ations before it can be fully realized. The South must reach 
her natural development — so long delayed; the West Indies, 
Mexico, the Central and South American States, must reach 
the degree of general prosperity, of social order and indus- 
trial activity assigned them by the resources they can com- 
mand; the rich traffic of the Pacific and Eastern Asia must 
pour through the ship canal which is to join the great ocean 
to the Gulf of Mexico. When all this great industrial devel- 
opment has been acquired in the neighboring countries the 
Mississi]>pi will, perhaps, be too small for the vast burden of 
values with which the immense trade then existing will have 
to deal. The passengers, the fruits, the delicate goods and 
materials required in haste, will then seek the railroad; but 
the river will float an unimagined quantity of the more solid 
results of agriculture and manufactures to the sea. 

The 9,000 miles of navigable streams, the 3,000 miles of 
lake shore, and the long line of Gulf coast, will then serve the 
same purposes of foreign commerce that the Atlantic and 
Pacific coasts do now. These waterways, so large and long, 
will then join the interior of the continent with the active 
world without, as they were desi'gned to do, and the center 
of the Valley will be, industrially and commercially, the cen- 
ter of the country. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

DIRECT FOREIGN COMMERCE OF THE VAIxLEY. 

The Mississippi Valley has been the providence of the 
American Republic. Binding it together through a common 
ownership, common settlement and a common development 
of its vast wealth, all classes in the East, but especially the 
manufacturers, the traders, the capitalists, and the shrewd 
speculators, have been enriched by it. Few walks in the 
ffeneral business life of the East have failed to draw a large 
part of their profit, directly or indirectly, from the overflow- 
ing abundance of this region. The people of the West sup- 
plied cheap provisions to the manufacturing classes and bought 
their wares with the price heightened by a protective tariff. 
Merchants imported foreign goods, re-sold them at a profit in 
the interior, and bought agricultural products to export — w^tli 
a profit. Capitalists and bankers invested and loaned to reap 
hundreds of millions in interest and the rise of values. 

But in no way has the country been more benefited by the 
Valley than in its contributions to commerce. The bulk of 
the exports which were to pay for imports have been from the 
northern or southern Valley. The cotton, which long formed 
fully one half of the exports, was largely produced in the 
lower Valley, and half the remainder of the values ex- 
ported was from the grain regions of the West, In more 
recent times, manufactures enter largely into export trade ; 
but the increase in articles *of food has gained in still larger 
proportions. The most of that which produced balances in 
European exchange, or drew money from abroad, was due to 
the Valley. 

So great has been the favorable reaction of the West on the 
East by the impulse given its manufactures, commerce and 

464 



THE RELATIONS OF THE EAST AND THE WEST, 405 

trade, that Eastern cities liave increased in population since 
1830, at about one half the ratio of the cities of the West, 
although millions annually emigrated from East to West. 
Almost one half the capitalized wealtli of the country has ac- 
cumulated in the Eastern and Middle States, although they 
have but little over one iifth of the population. As they are 
owners of much property in the Valley the ditierence is much 
greater than appears from the census. 

The surplus produce of the West has gone to the East and 
through it to foreign markets and paid a heavy profit to 
the East for handling; this profit has been reinvested in, or 
reloaned to, the West at extraordinarily high rates with the 
effect of compound interest. The West has been in so great 
a hurry to lay its foundations and reach its true productive 
period and the advantageous condition of an old country that 
it has not stopped to calculate and bargain, in the interest of 
economy, for its own section. It has hastily taken all the d,id 
it could get at whatever usurious rates. By so doing it has 
gained many years of progress but poured the larger part of 
its earnings into tlie lap of the East. The child has richly 
endowed the parent in this process; it now remains for it to 
attend more shrewdly to its own interests. 

This it is partly prepared to do by producing a considerable 
portion of its own manufactures, and the next step is to carry 
on as much of its own commerce as possible. As an interior 
region, it can do this only in part, the superiority of the 
Atlantic ports being absolute; yet it has great outlets on the 
north and south which have been almost unused for purposes 
of foreign trade. It has furnished about four fifths of the 
exports of the whole country and will, perhaps, keep up that 
proportion; if it do its own business on its own capital it 
will, in time, become as superior in accumulated property 
as it is in population and compass of resources. 

The changes that are preparing to this end lie partly in the 
transfer of manufactures which enable it to accumulate float- 
30 



466 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

ing capital ; partly in the opening of the South to general 
industry and development by putting away the slave-labor 
system; and partly in the development of the countries nearest 
the Gulf ports and the mouth of the great river to such a 
degree that profitable exchanges can be made on a vast scale. 
Other changes lie in the future and will, apparently, be wide- 
reaching. Among these is probably a resuscitation of direct 
commerce with Europe from the .great lakes and from the 
river. ^ 

The St. Lawrence was made to be used, and the Upper 
Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio were not united in 
the center of the Valley, forming the broadest commercial 
highway, without an important purpose. These channels, 
both leading to the outside world from a region that, more 
than any other on any continent, is entitled to be called the 
World's Granary — are the cheapest and most natural outlets 
for the boundless supplies of food the world needs, and the 
requirements of the Valley farmer can never be fairly met 
till they are fully in use. 

When an adequate population has developed all the natural 
industries of the Gulf States, the massive volume of excess 
will press southward to the sea. The channel of the Missis- 
sippi Kiver will be improved; all the 20,000 miles of interior 
water-ways, formerly said to be accessible from New Orleans, 
will be laden with the rich products of an inexhaustible soil 
drawn from it by the wise industry and economy of fifty or a 
hundred million agriculturists; the then well-ordered so- 
ciety of the rich islands of the Gulf will supply material for an 
immense trade; the mines and plateaus of Mexico will fiour- 
ish as now do those of California and Nevada; the trade of the 
re-oraranized Central and South American States will reach 
fabulous sums, and no unimportant marine tonnage will fetch 
and carry between St. Louis and London. 

The energy of the Anglo Saxon race is supplemented, in 
America, by a most valuable inventive genius, and intelligent 



THE VALLEY AND THE ISTHMUS SHIl' CANAL. 467 

skill in reaching the broadest and highest ends in every line 
of activity. The Valley has received a large share of the 
very best part of this special ability and afibrds the highest 
degree of stimnlns in every way besides giving it the largest 
field. "When the wide areas of the Valley itself are well 
explored and. all its resources are fully opened the energy of 
this race will find ample scope in the basin of the Gulf of 
Mexico, south and west of it, and by an isthmus ship canal 
with the vast trade of the Pacific. The Spanish Ameri- 
cans will not be left alone to work out, slowly and painfully, 
by their creole and native races, the high civilization and 
great industrial prosperity for which their countries were 
formed. America is as aggressive as is England; but its 
aggressiveness is directed against false systems of thought, of 
industry and economy. Tlie vast activities that have done so 
much for the A^alley itself, in one generation, will soon begin 
to overflow its boundaries to stimulate and guide the thought 
and industry of its immediate neighbors. This activity will 
be to the advantage of the foreign trade of the Valley. The 
precious woods and valuable agricultural ])roducts of the trop- 
ical regions around the Gulf will find markets so large and prof- 
itable that Americans will work them if their careless owners 
will not; the great valley of the Amazon will become an ap- 
pendage of the Mississippi Valley, commercially, through the 
Orinoco, with which its waters are connected; the trade of 
Peru, Bolivia and Chili will be tapped for St. Louis by the 
isthmus canal ; and the teas, silks and spices of Eastern Asia 
and the East Indies will be imported directly to the heart of 
the United States. 

Long before this system of direct connections with new 
fields of colossal commerce shall have been entirely opened 
the internal business of the country will have become too 
heavy for the railroad system alone, and every possible use 
will be made of the rivers and lakes. It may never be felt 
desirable, by our relatives of the Dominion of Canada, to form 



468 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

a consolidated political union with the Great Republic; but 
its material prosperity is indissolubly linked with it. Shar- 
ing with it the Great Lakes and controlling the St. Lawrence, 
with a vast interior continuation of the Valley beyond the 
sources of the Mississippi as valuable as Minnesota and 
Dakota, its natural industrial and commercial connections 
are with the Valley. The lakes and the Mississippi will 
necessarily be called on to bear off its surplus produce. 

So great an accumulation of material for transportation to 
the foreign world will irresistibly press the V^alley to direct 
foreign trade. The premonitory symptoms of this new depar- 
ture are already visible, in the clearing of the mouth of the 
Mississippi and incipient organizations along the river for 
direct foreign trade. Beginnings are slow and difficult where 
antagonistic interests are to be set aside, but, when fairly 
inaugurated, the characteristic zeal and impetuous rush of 
western enterprise will develop them with great rapidity. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE STIMULANTS TO EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR. 

Great events wliicli deeply stir the minds of men, and 
especially sacli as awaken a new sense of power and open a 
brighter promise of the future, have always acted favorably 
on creneral education. They awaken a new sense of the 
resources lying unused in human thought. The Crusades 
stirred up Europe to a new learning; the discovery of Amer- 
ica, accompanied by the conquest of the ocean and new worlds, 
started up innumerable schools of learning; wdiile the knowl- 
edge and experience gained by the untaught common adven- 
turers had something of the influence of a liberal education ; 
the excitement, the discussion and the new experiences of 
the revolutionary period were a practical education to the 
new nation — enlarging and elevating the mind. 

The civil war was peculiarly instructive and stimulating 
to American thought. The prolonged attention given to 
American theories and politics made the people more familiar 
with the principles and history of their own government 
than anything else could. They came out of the war with 
deflnite conceptions, with a lively sense of capacity and clear 
views of great results to be obtained. Necessity stimulated 
the minds of the Southern people and enthusiasm moved the 
Northern. A new and more stable union of the sections, a 
larger and more rapid progress, and a more comprehensive 
public and private prosperity were presented as Inspiring 
hopes before most minds. The impulse it gave to energy 
fulfilled the hope ; experience and reflection led to wise 
measures ; and the absorbing attention given to public events, 
their causes and consequences, made the nation far more 
intelligent than it had ever been before. It had much the 

469 



470 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

effect of an educational course on the people, drawing into 
action their latent mental power. Never before, among any 
people, was there so much reading, so much thinking, so 
much of intelligent conclusion from what was read and 
thought. The influence of the war was an education itself, 
in American principles and affairs, and left the people in a 
far hio-her and more favorable mental condition than it found 
them. 

The great development of material interests that had 
already begun in the North and would soon begin in the 
South carried on this awakened tendency. Science entered 
on a more active career and took charge of many important 
departments which had before been committed to compara- 
tively ignorant hands. The demand for thorough familiarity 
with some of its branches in order to fitness for positions of 
trust became constantly more imperative. The conduct of 
business on an immense scale, the precision and self-com- 
mand required in the control of machinery, in railroad em- 
ployes generally, and more or less in most branches of 
business, required, and by practice gave, a technical education 
and much of mental training to large masses of workmen. 
When acquired simply in routine practice alone it was, in 
itself, an education, so much breadth of knowledge, self- 
command and accuracy of attention and action were required. 
All these developed character They did not allow the work- 
men to remain simply machines, so much responsibility for 
general results was devolved on all the individuals employed 
to produce them. 

In this respect, the wide range of industry and activity 
required by the vast business of late years is of signal benefit 
to the lal)oring classes. The railroad sj^stem which employs 
so many hundreds of thousands of men on its extended lines, 
throwing each on his own responsibility for the intelligent 
co-operation that must produce precise results, is a striking 
example of the new dignity which industrial progress is con- 



EDUCATIONAL POWER OF MODERN ACTIVITY. 471 

ferring on the lal:>orer. Formerly, the hihorer was an unin- 
telligent machine; all important responsilu'lity was laid on 
the intelligent superintendent, and comprehensive intelli- 
gence in the laborer was not required. As labor is general- 
ized and brought into harmony with great natural forces and 
laws, the laborer is required to be also a thinker; and the wider 
the mental range, the more accurate the knowledge, the lietter 
the duty is j)erformed. He must not only know how and when 
to act personally, but how others should act that he may 
adjust his action to theirs. This demand for intelligence, 
this dividing of responsibility for results among all the em- 
ployes, is a constantly enlarging process, and in the same 
degree develops independent knowledge, mental discipline 
and reliability. These imply a practical education. 

At the same time the barriers to observation are being 
thrown down. The railroad and the steamer are making 
men acquainted with each other, tilling their thoughts with 
comparisons, begetting ideals prompting to improvement; 
the electric telegraph and the newspaper are employed in mak- 
ing observations in every part of the world and in taking ail 
men into their confidence. Every event of importance is 
immediately known over the whole civilized world, men take 
a silent view of the world's work of the day before every 
morning if they choose — and most true Americans in active 
life choose. 

Comprehensive activity is more and more the rule; opera- 
tions as well as observation take an ever wider range; local 
interests are more and more affected by distant events, and 
associated with many interests on the other side of the world, 
or in distant places. The activity of the American is naturally 
intense; he is absorbed in his aims and attentive to all that 
affects them. Therefore, the laborer, the artisan, the farmer, 
watch and study the direction of events that may affect their 
personal welfare. They read, discuss, become original politi- 
cians, financiers and theorists. Life grows intense while its 



472 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

sphere widens; earnestness of attention to wide relations and 
distant occurrences has the force of an education, or, at least, 
it stimulates ever larger numbers to the acquisition of knowl- 
edge and the formation of a personal judgment that imply 
an education or drawing out of the powers of the mind. The 
activities of the last generation have done much more, prob- 
ably, to really educate the mass of Americans than all the 
instruction of the schools. Thev have formed a practical 
impressive and very intelligible course of education. This 
})ractical appreciation of the value of knowledge among the 
adult population inclined them to reading, and the lively 
interest awakened in public events did not decline after the 
war. The general news was freely circulated by conversa- 
tion and discussion even among those who seldom read. The 
newspapers published in the Valley, in 1S60, numbered 2,000, 
and 3,000 in 1870, the rest of the country having 2,800. The 
annual issues of all the papers of the Valley, in 1870, was 
about 6,000,000 to 14,000,000 in the whole country. The 
whole number of copies issued in the year in the Valley 
was 525,000,000 to 1,500,000,000 in the whole of the United 
States. The East contains the commercial, the literary and 
the political metropolis. The writers and publishers of the 
East find a large part of their readers in the West — the pub- 
lishing in the Valley being mainly for the supply of local 
wants. The enterprise of the Valley does not allow its infor- 
mation to get out of date. 

The census marshals of 1870 found 164,000 libraries of 
books in the United States, 100,000 of which they credited 
to the Valley; but, if more numerous, they were naturally 
smaller by a large average. Of 45,000,000 volumes in all the 
libraries of the country but 20,000,000 were found in the Val- 
ley. Many of them were of recent date and more valuable 
to the masses of the people from having a smaller number of 
old books rarely consulted. Of 56,000 libraries, other than 
private, in the country, 24,000 were in the Valley, containing 



LIBEARIES AND CUURCHES IN THE VALLEY. 473 

but 6,000,000, out of the 19,000,000 volumes iu them alL lu 
1875 the liureau of Education reported 250 public libraries 
ot 300 volumes and over, established in various parts of the 
Valley since 1870, which contained, in the aggregate, nearly 
500,000 volumes. 

The number of church edifices in the Valley in 1870, was 
34,030, with 10,346,472 sittings, at a cost of $121,300,000— 
the whole country having 72,000 churches, 21,600,000 sittings, 
and its church property being valued at $354,000,000. The 
newer regions of the West supply religious instruction to 
large numbers — possibly to some millions — without edifices 
specially devoted to that object. The average cost of churches 
in the East is nearly nine thousand dollars and in the Valley 
about three thousand five hundred. The Valley, as a whole, 
may be considered, relatively, fairly well supplied with the 
means of moral education. 

All these instruments of intelligence are perhaps exceeded, 
for the purposes of the present generation, by social inter- 
course, by constant discussion, by the educating power of 
experience and observation. The study of American institu- 
tions and ideas during a period of crisis so great and interest- 
ing gave a special clearness of insight to the citizens who re- 
constructed it on a broader base and gave it a more perfect 
development and unity. In spite of all the faults they 
committed, future generations will look back at them with 
admiration and reverence, for, to them, the faults will appear 
comparatively small and the service they rendered really 
large. 



CHAPTER XY. 



THE WONDERFUL PROGRESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION. 

When the armies Avere disbanded at the close of the war 
the expenditures and energy that li ad been required to support 
it were immediately turned to the great enterprises of peace. 
Manuftxctures, internal commerce and education gained in 
mag!iitude and force in a few years quite as much as in the 
entire past career of the Republic. Between 1860 and 1870 
the capital employed in manufactures increased from one 
thousand and nine million dollars to two thousand, one hun- 
dred and eighteen million. From 28,000 miles, in 1860, the 
lines of railway open to traffic had increased to 62,000, in 
1872, and, in 1870, the values transported in the internal com- 
merce of the country were double those of 1865. The prop- 
erty valuation of the country ascended from sixteen thousand 
million dollars, in 1860, to thirty thousand million in 1870, 
notwithstanding the vast destruction and expense of the war 
and throwing out of property valuation nearly four million of 
the colored population of the country. The comparison of 
funds devoted to educational purposes is still more striking. 
In 1860 the expenditure for schools of all kinds in the United 
States was thirty-four million dollars; in 1870 it amounted to 
ninety-five million. 

When it is considered how vast were the sums withdrawn 
from the available capital of the country by the war, and how 
many embarrassments, that might have been expected to crip- 
ple its progress, sprang from that wasteful contest, it will not 
seem exaggeration to say that a new era of unaccustomed 
strength and rapidity of development dated from its close. 
The efTective force of American ideas, enterprise and energy 
seemed to have been at least quadrupled. There was a rush of 

474 



GKOWTII OF SCHOOL REVENUES IN TEN YEARS. 475 

prosperity for the first eight years, whicli ])hiced the country 
in a new position. The rills and modest streams had sud- 
denly expanded into mighty riv'ors. If they then ceased to 
overflow their sources were not dried up; they still sent forth 
steady and powerful currents. The talent and intelligence of 
the country had been at school for ninety years and now first 
began to reap the full frnit of their studies and experiences 
and to display the character and vigor of their manhood. 
Tlie apprentice had become the master. 

Americans have been reproached, without good reason, for 
extreme devotion to their material interests. The mistake 
arose from the circumstance that earnestness and progress in 
this field were more apparent than in the higher one of cul- 
ture, to make a striking showing in which required a maturity 
of organization and an abundance of accumulated wealth im- 
possible in formative periods. These had been gathered to 
such an extent by the commencement of the war that, at its 
close, when the results began to do justice to the real efforts 
of the past, they assumed an imposing magnitude. This is 
made summarily apparent by comparison of the school reve- 
nues of some of the leading States in different sections in 
1860 and 1870. Massachusetts devoted $2,200,000, to all her 
schools, in 1860, and $4,800,000 in 1870; New York gave 
$5,000,000 to schools in 1860 and $15,900,000 in 1S70: Ohio 
and Pennsylvania each a little over $3,000,000 in 1860, and 
about $10,000,000 in 1870; Illinois had advanced from $2,500,- 
000, in 1860, to $9,900,000 in 1870; Missouri from $1,200,000 
to $4,300,000; Iowa from $700,000 to $3,500,000; California 
from $277,000 to $2,946,000; even Kentucky, wasted by war on 
her soil and her labor system profoundly disturbed, advanced 
from $1,080,000 in 1860 to $2,530,000 in 18 70, and Tennessee 
gave $600,000 more for education in 1870 than 1860, though 
it then exceeded $1,000,000. 

This increase of school revenues was attended by an im- 
provement in educational systems whicli doubled the value 



4T6 THE MISSISSIPPI valley. 

of the outlay. At every practicable point improvements 
were introduced. Better methods were em])l()yed whenever 
it was believed such had been devised; teaciiers were selected 
with more care; high schools, academies and colleges for 
supplying higher grades of instruction were multiplied, 
or more liberally supported ; agricultural colleges were 
founded; schools of art, of technical and professional science; 
schools for the blind, for the deaf and dumb, and for 
every special class that required separate attention, sprung 
up on every hand. Schools for the colored people were estab- 
lished in the South, embracing all grades of instruction, from 
the primary school to the college or university. No field 
where intelligence could be trained was overlooked. 

The new settlements and the Territories were not deprived, 
as formerly, of the adv^antages of education until they had 
gained a considerable population. Schools were established 
wherever a few pupils could be gathered. The interest of 
the people in the intelligence of the future citizens of the 
Republic was everywhere active. 

In the older and more populous States of the Yalley school 
organizations met with a steady success, probably not exceeded 
anywhere in the world. In the newer regions more time was 
required to produce results commensurate with the outlay and 
the efforts made ; but everywhere the welfare of the future 
was secured so far as eiforts in this direction could secure it. 
Schools were the first to feel the pulsations of prosperity and 
the last to share pecuniary adversity throughout the country. 

The number of schools of all kinds in the country, in 1860, 
was 115,224, and in 1870, 141,629— a gain of 26,000. In 
the Valley, from 63,700 in 1860, they increased to 83,900 
in 1870 — a gain of more than 20,000. The number of pupils 
in attendance at all the schools of the United States in 1860 
was 5,477,000 and in 1870, 7,209,000. In the Yalley the 
increase was from 3,175,000 to 4.115,000 and in 1875 they 
bad increased to 5,200,000 in the Yalley and 8,950,000 in the 
whole United States. 



EXl'ENDITUUKS FOR COMMON AND NORMAL SCHOOLS. 477 

In ISGO the expenditures for schools of all kinds in the 
United States was about 34,700,000 ; in 1870, $95,400,000. In 
the Valley the expenditures increased from $16,900,0(J0 in 
1860 to $48,600,000 in 1870. The income of schools for 
1875 is given with accuracy only for the common school S3^s- 
tems of the States and territories. The common school in- 
come of the whole country in 1870, was $65,400,000; of this, 
$36,900,000 belonged to the Valley. 

In 1875 the Valley had $49,000,000 for common schools 
and the whole United States $88,600,000. This was a great 
gain in the Vallej^ considering the many dithculties after 
1873. It had not the reserve resources of the older region 
but did not, on that account, pursue its educational plans 
with less viffor. 

Of 62 Xormal Schools for training teachers, in the country, 
in 1875, one half, 31, w^ere in the Valley ; and of the 29,000 
students of the art of teaching, al)out 16,000 were in the 
Valley— considerably over half The funds, however, were 
not equally divided, $280,000 being spent on them in the 
Valley to $400,000 in the rest of the country. So, of the 
professional and- technical scli(X)ls of the country those of the 
Valley had an increase less than $8,000,000, while other parts 
of the country gave theirs almost $10,000,000. The East 
had theadv^antage of large fortunes and liberal bequests from 
individnals not enjoyed to the same extent in the Valley. 
Yet, the East furnished to the West the teaching of its expe- 
rience, the culture of its scholars, and unnumbered benefac- 
tions and loans of its capital for the great enterprises under- 
taken. The East has ever been the banker of the West. It 
has matured ideas, methods and men, and all have tended to 
flow westward ; if it has grown rich in commerce with the 
West, its gifts and loans have made many things possible in 
the Valley that, without it, must have waited for a better day. 

The ambition to found new institutions in the new soil of 
the Valley has sometimes been excessive, and more adapted 



478 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

to the necessities of the future than the present. Of 365 col- 
leges and universities in the United States, in 1875, 230 were 
in the Valley. Of the 76,000 students in them all 34,000 
were in the Valley; yet, of the $5,000,000 income enijojed 
by them all, the Valley had but $1,800,000. Such differences 
will disappear with the rapidly increasing wealth of the Val- 
ley. Its outlined organizations, however numerous now, com- 
pared with the funds provided for their support, will all be 
required presently. Like the first Fathers of the Republic, 
the inhabitants of the Valley are working for the future, 
whose intellectual welfare they do not by any means neglect 
in tlieir eager ])ursuit of present material advantage. 

It is a mistake and an injustice to suppose that the South- 
ern, or slave. States of the Valley did little for the cause of 
education. In 1860, out of the 34,500 schools of all kinds in 
the Valley, 18,900 were in slave States, and they spent on 
them, in that year, $6,600,000— about one fifth of all that was 
spent in the whole country for education. Common schools 
were well organized in the Northwest, but efforts in that direc- 
tion were comparatively ineftectual in the South. Louisiana, 
with but 350,000 white population, had a lar-ger income, pro- 
vided by her Constitution, to spend on her common schools 
than Illinois, with 1,700,000 whites. Yet the results were 
small compared with Illinois. The education of the white 
population was general in the South, although under different 
modes, and wanting largely in the vigor of organization and 
in the earnest persistance of purpose that combined the whole 
population of the free States in an active and liberal support 
of plans of universal education. 

There was a singular tendency toward improvement, and 
the years of the war, so full of excitement and immense 
sacrifices for the support of the General Government, left 
educational systems in full progress in the free States. It 
would be difficult to estimate the effect of this immense 
progress of fifteen years; perhaps it would even be difficult 



THE RESULTS OK tXjMMON HC'HOOI, INSTKUCTION. 479 

to over-estimate it. It is true that education is only be"-un 
when the young are graduated from tlic common school, 
the academy or the college; yet it is the first step, and a 
great one. It may fairly be considered, as a rule, to have 
transferred the mental powers of the individual from the 
latent and passive to the active state. In a multitude of 
cases this does not at once appear, and may not for o-ener- 
ations, possibly; yet it is an eye opened, a horizon en- 
larged, a tendency given. Definite ideas on a multitude of 
subjects are formed, and the key to the domains of knowledge 
is put into the hands of the young. The newspaper is placed 
before liim, a thousand occasions for using his acquisitions 
arise in the active life around him. The germs of intellect- 
ual power often find a poor soil, but some of them are sure 
to spring into life. Unfavorable circumstances may turn the 
pupil to vice or wither all that springs up; but these will be 
exceptional cases. It is a new help to rise in the world, con- 
fers a sense of respectability, and if he does not improve on 
hisb;isis of school education he will be more anxious that his 
children should learn. It is a great step gained, for the lowest. 

For multitudes it is the l)road base on which to build a 
new career ; the impulse which finally turns the machine to 
the man. Popular education is an arm reached down to eacli 
social grade to draw it up to a higher level. It is a lever to 
raise the world of men to a better life. Social influences, the 
exercise and discipline of business, innate aspiration, stimu- 
lated more and more every year by the expansive progress of 
the times, are so many forces to work this lever. The whole 
result, in the course of generations, must be incalculable. 

Improvement of methods will go on until the value of 
results from the same efforts and expenditures will be 
perhaps increased a hundred fold, while the efforts and 
expenditures themselves are increasing by a large ratio. In 
1873, the income of the common school system was a little 
over $80,000,000 : in 1875, in spite of the great financial 



480 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

difficulties of the intervening time, they increased by over 
$8,000,000 while, probably, the value of the whole outlay had 
been increased by a much larger per cent. Teachers yearly 
become more intelligent and efficient by a large general 
average. 

Not one generation has passed since the interest in popular 
education became so general as to result in the formation of 
the systems which have been seen to expand so greatly,since 
the close of the war. A large part of the more important 
and impressive results are still very partially worked out; 
and the generation that has been most largely benefited has 
not yet replaced that which grew up under far less favorable 
circumstances; therefore the general progress of intelligence 
that has been gained is only partially perceptible. A large 
proportion of the people who were scattered over the West 
and South when almost no facilities for the education of their 
families had been introduced still live. Their children, who 
had few advantages compared with those now furnished to 
their families, are in the prime of life — of a life, on the aver- 
age, most energetic and successfully progressive. When 
they give place to the youth now receiving superior instruc- 
tion the law of progress will declare itself with still greater 
distinctness. 

Let the educational deprivations of the pioneers east of the 
Mississippi be compared with the attention now given to pop 
ular instruction in new States and Territories. What the New 
England pioneers first undertook in Ohio, and only partially 
succeeded in, is carried out eff*ectively in the new regions of 
the present. Usually the best and most expensive building 
erected in Kansas, Nebraska, and other new settlements of the 
western border of the Valley, is a school house. In all the 
.villages and towns of a few hundred scholars, graded schools, 
taught by carefully trained instructors, are in full operation; 
normal schools, libraries, newspapers, the telegraph and rail- 
road, unite to bring all the impulses and light of the most 



PRESENT EDUCATION AND TUE FUTURE. 481 

favored communities to bear on the young as well as the adult. 
They are still in the center of civilization and feel all the 
powerful pulsations of its stirring life. There is now no fron- 
tier where life and thought can be arrested and stagnate. How 
great must be the sum of intellectual power added in the next 
twenty years when growth is universal and the various im- 
plements of learning and practical discipline are increased 
tenfold, both in number and comparative efficiency, over 
those of the last twenty years ? 

Education meets with more difficulties, in the way of ef- 
fective organization, in the South, because it is comparatively 
poor and it has four millions of freed men to instruct. But 
the opening stage will soon be past, organizations will get 
into the best working order, and progress acquire a momentum 
sufficient to override all difficulties. The significance of the 
general educational situation is very great. It certainly 
promises an extraordinary future, such as has seldom been 
imagined but by the brain of an enthusiast. Culture is a 
living, growing organism. It has become thoroughly natural- 
ized in every walk of life in the Valley and will bring forth 
in as great abundance as the soil of the prairies. 

31 



CHAPTEK XVI. 

THE GKOWING BREADTH OF RELATIONS TO THE OUTSIDE 

WORLD. 

The actual usefulness of the resources of the Valley, and the 
deo-ree in which they will become sources of colossal wealth to 
its inhabitants, depends on the development of other sections 
and other nations in different lines. As these become wealthy 
and great in other ways, and require and are able to pay for the 
excess of its special products, those products will acquire value. 
If others do not need, and will not buy, at remunerative prices, 
what it can furnish beyond its own consumption it will still 
be poor in the midst of its abundance; its activity will be 
checked; and it will be unable to purchase the thousand things 
it does not produce and which enter so largely, in modern 
times, into the list of necessities, comforts or luxuries of life. 
A due estimate of the Valley, therefore, requires some 
knowledge of the character and degree of development of 
outside regions. 

The Eastern or Atlantic States bear closer and more im- 
portant relation to the center of the continent than any other 
reo-ion. At first, they contained the nation; for more than 
half the period of its existence they have held the great mass 
of its population and have always held the larger part of its 
surplus wealth and owned and conducted the mass of its 
commerce, trade and manufactures. It has been only within 
a few years that this central section, so long and laboriously 
occupied in laying foundations, has so far succeeded as to 
begin to accumulate on a large scale. 

The East, by its position facing Europe, has always had a 
substantial monopoly of commerce and must always possess 
eminent advantages in that respect over the rest of the coun- 

483 



THE RELATIONS OF THE VALLEY WITH THE EAST. 483 

try, The constant growth of its commerce is secure. The 
southern and central Yalley will naturally obtain a consider- 
able share of that branch of activity, by the gulf and its 
great river, but it will be chiefly a division of the growth of 
commerce, immense in itself as the South develops its un- 
touched resources and the markets of the world enlarire : 
but small compared with the upper Atlantic regions — placed 
directly between the grain-growing States of the Northwest 
and Europe, with the immense advantage of the chain of 
great lakes and easy railway communications. The commer- 
cial superiority of the Atlantic region will always make its 
prosperity a matter of great interest to the upper Yalley. 

But it is still more eminent for its manufactures than its 
commerce. We have seen that a considerable decree of trans- 
fer of some of these industries to the Valley began between 
1860 and 1870. Western Pennsylvania and Ohio together 
produced four fifths as much as Massachusetts, in 1870, and 
Illinois and Missouri together about the same, and, united, 
these four Western regions produced one fourth more than 
New York; but that did not prevent a colossal development 
of manufactures in the East during that decade. 

The products of the manufactures of Massachusetts, New 
York and Pennsylvania rose from less than one thousand mil- 
lion dollars' value in 1860, to more than two thousand five 
hundred million in 1870 ; and at the last date they produced 
considerably more than half the manufactures of the entire 
Union. Transfers of much importance, of some of these in- 
dustries, are likely to be made westward and the Yalley will 
soon far excel the present manufactured values of the whole 
country; yet it can not be questioned that the East will 
always maintain a great superiority. America is beginning 
to manufacture for the foreign world on a larger scale each 
year; and the advantages of vicinity to the great commercial 
ports, of vast investments made and tendencies produced, 
will preserve to it the lead in this direction probably in all 
the future. 



484 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The East has its agricultural greatness, also. In 1870 the 
value of farms in New York was greater than that of any 
other State in the Union by more than two hundred and fifty 
million dollars; Pennsylvania was only slightly exceeded by 
Ohio, and exceeded Illinois by eighty million dollars; and the 
agricultural interest in the East, generally, is one of great 
mao-nitude. But it will be remembered that one third of 
Pennsylvania is in the Valley, and that much of New York 
is the eastern part of the Great Lake system by geological 
origin, as well as by position and soil, and that system is an 
essential part of the Yalley. Nor is it to be forgotten that, 
having the great advantage of lying near the centers of pop- 
ulation and wealth, these States have already reached a com- 
parative maturity of agricultural development, while most of 
the Yalley proper has, as yet, produced only its first fruits and 
given but a hint of its capacities. While, then, the results of 
agriculture in the East will be comparatively stationary, the 
Yalley agriculture may be developed to any desirable extent 
for centuries to come. The proportion of food produced in 
the East to its population will constantly diminish and its 
relations to the welfare of the Yalley enlarge in the same 
degree. 

By its commercial and manufacturing superiority it must 
gather a dense population, generally prosperous, which will 
furnish an ever larger market to the Yalley. As, therefore, 
the Yalley will be ever a large customer of the East so it will 
find in that section one of the largest sources of its wealth. 
They complement each other. 

The mining rsgions of the Pacific section are comparatively 
new, but had the foundations of their Anglo-American civili- 
zation laid with surprising speed under the stimulus of gold 
discoveries. These were enlarged and consolidated by the con- 
struction of the Pacific Railway, connecting them with the 
East, which was completed in 1869. They decreased in the 
product of precious metals from sixty-five million dollars, in 



THE PACIFIC SI,OPE AND THE VALLEY. 485 

1853, to thirty-six millions, in 1872 and 1873; but the great 
quantity of these metals deposited through the whole range 
of the Rocky Mountains becomes more evident as they are 
more carefully examined, and they may be relied on to fur- 
nish a constant supply for centuries to come, and also vast 
quantities of more common, but more useful, mineral products. 

The product of gold and silver in this whole region, includ- 
ing Colorado, Montana and westward to the Pacitic, was esti- 
mated to have amounted, between the years 1848 and the com- 
mencement of 1876, to one thousand, Hve hundred and ninety 
million dollars. Yet its true mining wealth must be consid- 
ered as but slightly drawn up(.)n. Already more than a mil- 
lion inhabitants are spread along the Pacitic Slope or scattered 
through the valleys and gorges of the mountains. San Fran- 
cisco will become another New York — the metropolis of a 
populous region and numerous States, the center of vast com- 
merce with Japan, China and the East Indies; other railways 
will join this coast with the Yalley and with the East; and, 
in time, its commerce and the products of its mines will be- 
come, perhaps, almost as important in value as the products of 
the East. Its agricultural capacities are not the least of its 
resources, as yet. In 1870 the value of the farms of Cali- 
fornia amounted to $141,000,000, and their products to about 
$50,000,000, increased to over $54,000,000 in 1875, exclusive 
of its fruits, while its live stock was then valued at more than 
$45,000,000. Its entire income, from all these resources, must 
have amounted, in that year, to $65,000.000 — the largest sum 
it ever produced in one year from its mines. 

Yet, great as is the agricultural capacity which these statis- 
tics indicate, commerce, manufactures and mining will gather 
a great population of non-agriculturists, whose demands for 
food can not be supplied by the utmost resources of all the 
lands of those States which can be cultivated with profit, great 
as future results are certain to prove, with irrigation. In time, 
the abundant food products of the Yalley will flow across the 



486 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

mountains to its commercial centers for the use of its popu- 
lation and for export to Asia or the islands of the Pacific. 
The mining industries, the forests, and the commerce of the 
Pacific side of the continent will ultimately raise that region 
to a prosperity and a magnitude of development rivaling the 
East; for it has a field more vast without the same rivalry 
from Furope. "Western America will regenerate Asia, in the 
course of time, by its free and natural civilization, and grow 
rich in the process. 

Thus, the Yalley finds itself midway between two sections 
whose internal capacities and outside relations assure them a 
boundless development. The East has two classes of markets, 
whose capacity to receive from her will constantly enlarge — 
Europe and all the lands readily reached by the commerce of 
the Atlantic on one side, and those of the inexhaustibly fer- 
tile "Valley on the other. The extreme West is equally favored 
by ready connections with Asia, the East Indies and the trop- 
ical wealth of the Pacific islands on one side, and the Valley 
on the other. By means, then, of these two powerful sup- 
ports — these two arms stretched out east and west to Europe 
and Asia— the Valley makes its great superiority in its own 
special resources felt to the ends of the earth. 

Steam and the electric telegraph have quite changed the 
relations of those communities of mankind called nations. 
From the dawn of history nations have been, in general, 
Ishmaelites to each other— each in a state of violent antag- 
onism to the rest, which, as a rule, only prudence and a sense 
of weakness restrained. ' Alliances were formed to give tem- 
porary strength for self-protection or for oftense. As civili- 
zation ripened in modern times, and wide-spread activities 
required some check to this spirit ever threatening a sudden 
and dangerous outbreak of war, a loose confederacy was formed,, 
among the most civilized nations, to maintain the " Balance 
of Power " in Europe, It put a curb on ambition and raised 
strong barriers against the destructive exercise of military 



MODERN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. 487 

power. Napoleon Bonaparte defied this prudent European 
tribunal, and, after a contest of nearly twenty years, was 
finally overthrown by it. 

Yet, so strong is the antagonistic principle among men that 
even Europe has had small success in her efi'ort to control it. 
So afraid are her nations of each other, so ready to improve 
any favorable chance of building up their own power at the 
expense of others, that, in profound peace, Europe is a vast 
warlike camp; its armies and navies, and the interest of its 
war debts, exceed all its other expenses. Its war debts are 
too large to hope ever to pay off, some nations not being able 
even to pay the interest on them. With the return to first 
principles and natural law of the American Republic an ele- 
ment of reform was introduced. The United States would be 
the friend of all, the enemy of none, and declined to maintain 
a larger standing army than was necessai-y to protect her fron- 
tiers. The war with England, with Mexico, and the Civil War 
were exceptional. The principle has gathered strength even 
from the result of these wars; but its great gain has been 
derived from the development of power in the people every- 
where and the corresponding decrease of strength in govern- 
ments. 

The chief direct instruments of this happy re-distribution 
of power have been steam and electricity. They have brought 
nations nearer to each other, have greatly multiplied relations 
of mutual profit between them, and have immensely promoted 
the development of the elements of wealth in civilized lands, 
while, at the same time, distributing it more equally among 
all classes of men. Nations no longer prosper independently. 
Those which have business relations with the largest number 
of foreign peoples are the most prosj^erous, and the degree of 
their prosperity will be measured by the extent of business 
done with each. This draws the nations together, increases 
community of interests and makes the prosperity of one the 
prosperity of all. They have become mutually dependent. 



488 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

The disturbance of friendly relations between any two intro- 
duces a disastrous element into the business of those most dis- 
tant and causes suffering through the whole civilized world. 
Under this consolidation of the nations into a vast com- 
munity, that member which possesses the greatest quantity of 
valuable products of a kind wanted by the largest number 
of other nations will hold the most important and vital rela- 
tions toward the rest. It will "come to the front," will exert 
the most influence and will be the most concerned in the peace 
and prosperity of the world. The nation holding that fore- 
most place at the present time is England. The annual value 
of her commerce much exceeds three thousand million dollars, 
while that of France and the United States, both holding the 
second rank, and nearly equal with each other, is less than 
one half as much for each. Their foreign commerce united 
does not equal England's. It is largely by her manufacturing 
activity that she has gained and holds this rank, her coal sup- 
plying her with manufacturing force In 1876 her production 
of coal amounted to 149,300,000 tons, while its production in 
the United States was estimated at 47,500,000 tons. But all 
the coal in the rest of the world is, apparently, but a fraction 
of that held by the United States. 

While, therefore, England is the commercial and manufac- 
turing country of the present, the United States is that of the 
future. England imports a large part of her raw material for 
manufacturing purposes, while America produces the larger 
part of hers — perhaps she is capable of producing all. Eng- 
land imported, in 1873-4, 3,149,000 bales of cotton, consum- 
ing herself 2,040,000 bales of it. The United States, in the 
same year, consumed 1,306,000 bales, and, in 1875, produced 
4,600,000 bales. The United States, by the illimitable re- 
sources of its great Yalley, must be able to distance every 
competitor as a manufacturing and commercial nation. Eng- 
land must import much of her material and food for the work- 
men who produce the manufactures for her export commerce 



now AMERICA WILI- SURPASS ENGLAND. 489 

— a great burden laid on her production, which is ahnost 
entirely spared the American manufacturer. He can, in the 
hjn^' run, and on close competition, produce chea])er and 
faster than his English compeer, and has the assurance of the 
future market. 

Jt was the Anglo-Saxon instinct of business sagacity, the 
very natural desire to be rid of a dangerous rival in their own 
line if it could occur without injury to themselves, that led to 
a large degree of English sympathy for the South in the Civil 
War and the disposition, indulged farther than prudence would 
have counseled, to render it aid; and it was the same sagacity 
that led the loyal States to cheerfully strain every nerve to 
preserve a Union on which the speedy attainment of commer- 
cial and manufacturing superiority dejjended. To keep the 
great Valley entire and joined to the East was as important 
to the natural development as to the political strength of the 
Anglo-American people. 

The Yalley, then, stands as the feeder, and in many respects 
the support, of the right and left wing of the country, giving 
vigor to each strong arm to perform its own special work, and 
adding to their commercial exports an enormous amount of 
its special products. The internal commerce of tlie country, 
in 1876, is estimated to have been as follows: $10,000,000,000 
worth of goods transported over its railways ; $500,000 on 
its canals, and $750,000,000 on vessels engaged in its domes- 
tic trade — $11,250,000,000 in all, more than seven times 
the value of the whole foreign commerce of the country, in- 
cluding exports and imports. Perhaps five times the value 
of the foreign trade was transported from, to, or within the 
Yalley, for all which transportation its products paid. Its 
relations to the world of business within and without the 
country are already of great magnitude. England is an old 
K'.ountry It had only the extension of its business to provide 
for, wdiile the United States, being new and vast, must attend 
to laying, and building on, first foundations. Everything must 



490 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEV. 

be built up and organized from the bottom ; it could give a 
portion only of its attention, capital and skill to work in 
which energetic England was wholly engaged. It is now far 
advanced in preparation and may be expected to compete 
with England as fast as it can open markets for its wares. 
The magnificent results of its industry and enterprise will 
80on astonish the world. 

Wlien the Gulf States are well developed, and even as soon 
as they are in the full career toward this condition, an active 
and rapidly-growing commerce will make their section fore- 
most ill the country in prosperity and wealth. All the 
hindrances will soon be overcome. 

To the full development of a successful commercial compe- 
tition with the Atlantic States it is necessary that the West 
Indies, Mexico, Central America and the South American 
States should acquire political, social and industrial stability 
and begin a solid and rapid progress, which may be held as- 
assured to them by the painful lessons of their past experience,, 
by the admixture of industrious foreign blood and by the 
growing influence and powerful example of the United 
States. 

Another circumstance of perhaps still greater importance 
will bring a flood of foreign commerce to the lower Yalley. 
A ship canal through the Isthmus will open the Pacific to 
Atlantic commerce. New Orleans and St. Louis may then 
load their vessels for Japan, China and the West coast of 
America without re-shipment of exports and imports. The 
Yalley will then be in direct relations with Europe by the 
St. Lawrence, with all the South Atlantic countries by the 
Gulf of Mexico and witli all Pacific lands by the Isthmus 
canal. 

The foreign commerce of the river system of the Valley 
will be a new and great relief to the overflowing products of 
the Valley It will not be easy, when such relations are fully 
established, to compel its farmers to sell, for an insufficient 



THE FUTURE RANK OF NATIONS AND SECTIONS. 491 

price, its several thousand million bushels of various grains. 
The storehouses and granaries will be kept comparatively 
free and the whole Valley will feel the stimulus of a new life. 
The railway problems will be simplified, the manufactures, 
the mining and general trade of the Valley will flourish, and, 
joined to its specialty, will raise the Valley out of dependence 
on the capitalists and jobbers of the East. 

The relations of the Valley arising from its central position 
between the two powerful sections, each having a great 
specialty, and the two oceans which give it the advantage be- 
lono-ino- to Rome and Italv at the commencement of the 
Christian era as a kind of center of the world, are of great 
importance to it, to the country as a whole, and to the other 
four quarters of the globe. As yet, indeed, this central emi- 
nence is only suggested ; it is a realization for the future. 
It can not be foreseen that, when it is realized, it will dimin- 
ish the proper greatness of other sections ; or that the superior- 
ity of the United States, as a whole, will dry up any of the 
real sources of prosperity in other lands. A certain redistri- 
bution of industries will give to every region an eminence of 
its own determined by its natural resources and the special 
genius of its inhabitants, wlierel)y its power to produce results 
will be o-reatlv increased ; but the rank of nations and coun- 
tries will be reassigned. 

That nation or section which is possessed of the most exten- 
sive, and the largest number of. permanent resources, with the 
capacity in its people of making the most of them by their 
enterprise and intelligence, will necessarily come to the front 
and exert the widest influence. The ultimate leadership of 
the world was determined by the operation of those forces 
which, in geoloo-ical times, distriljuted the resources of the 
earth in its bosom, and, later, arranged the relative ])ositions, 
and directed the development and distribution, of the races of 
mankind. Character and special fitness will always have 
much to do with the course of human aftairs and the rank of 



492 THK MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

nations. The Germanic races will take the lead of the world 
for centuries, if not forever, and the practical sense of the 
Anjrlo-Saxon seems to assure to them alwavs the front of this 
vanguard of progress and power. 

It can not be foreseen that England will ever experience 
the fate of Assyria, Chaldea, Greece, Carthage, or Rome. 
Macauley's New Zealander is an impossibility. They all 
rested on superficial and temporary features of national char- 
acter and on their relative situation. The prosperity of 
England rests on the inherent character and mental resources 
of her inhabitants and on a superior situation. This charac- 
ter and accompanying advantages are developed and strength- 
ened, not worn and wasted, by her advance. When one re- 
source of material power fails another will be easily found. 
Phvsical resources and ])articular advantao^es mav be exhausted 
and changed; mental power is nourished by action. It does 
not seem that this vigorous intelligence can ever fail; that it 
can become the sport of circumstances or the victim of false 
systems. It is so strongly progressive and so wisely con- 
servative as to become more and more the master of all situ- 
ations, and no exhaustion of present resources can fail to be 
replaced by some other and greater. England, apparently, 
must always advance in greatness. 

Yet, her own children, endowed with the leading features of 
her genius, found a better base for development, and, compar- 
atively unfettered by the past, they had the same high instinct 
ef prudence which has made her great. It led them to loosen 
the bonds that interfered with free action. The Anglo- 
American in the Valley has found a situation and outward 
resources which he is in the way of improving to the utmost, 
and which, in less than two centuries of independent life, will 
give him a decided and permanent advantage over his Euro- 
pean relative. America has looser institutions, but the love 
of order and regard for law; a quick and intelligent percep- 
tion of interest finds fewer obstacles than in the mother 



FUTURE CONCENTRATION OF POWER IN THE VALLEY. 493 

country; and her ])eopIeliave coinnienced a course of success- 
ful rivalry that will place the old country in the second rank 
at no distant day. Great as may be tht? progress of Old 
England, the New England, with its wonderful Valley, will 
outstrip her. 

Capital tends toward it — not only because it can gather the 
largest rewards in the development of the superior mass and 
quality of resources, and of the greater ease and less expense 
of obtaining the raw material for its industries — but also 
because, from its central situation, it can more readily survey 
and reach with its products all the various markets for which 
they are destined. Capital will often cross the mountains and 
locate at Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago or St. Louis, accord- 
ing to the convenience and cheapness of material, if it seeks 
a market in every region of the country. Circumstances, 
indeed, modify that movement for the present; facilities are 
not equally developed in many of the newer sections, markets 
have not opened everywhere as they will in the course of years. 
When population has flowed everywhere and produced a de- 
mand for manufactures at every point, when competition is 
so close that small diiferences in cost of material and trans- 
portation, or presence in the general center of the country, 
secures larger sales at less cost, then what are trifles now will 
form the real margin of profit, and capital will prefer the 
Valley to the extreme East or West. This period will come 
in one, two, or a few, generations. 

Business is generalized more readily when it is condncted 
from the center, unless local circumstances are so favorable as 
to over-balance that advantage. In a country of spaces so 
large and sources of prosperity so many and so great, the 
internal commerce wnll always remain vastly superior to the 
foreign, and a large part of it will start from central points. 
The middle regions of the Valley, therefore, will attract activ- 
ity and, in the long run, will gather the greatest accumula- 
tions of industry and wealth. The business of the whole 



494 • THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

country will radiate from it and the tendency to outgrow and 
to control other sections must constantly increase. 

What the country has become in a hundred years is very 
little to what it will become in another century. Its politics, 
its industries, its agents of activity, are dev^eloped to a stable 
point — are so unified that the pulsations of its thought and 
energy meet comparatively trifling obstacles and are felt from 
ocean to ocean and from Montana to Florida. With this free 
field activity will organize — that is to say, will regulate and 
harmonize its various branches so as to lose as little power 
in conflict as possible; which implies a center and a circum- 
ference, a head and extremities, a wise control and subordi- 
nation. As the body of the people, the bulk of the natural 
wealth of the country, and conveniences for combining, assim- 
ilating and distributing the products of labor are found in the 
Yalley it follows that other sections are united in it and con- 
trolled through it. 

A large proportion of the commerce, the manufactures and 
the mining of tlie other sections are guided by the needs of 
the center and most important region of the nation. The 
country finds its unity and completeness in it. 

It is no longer possible for one section of the United States 
to mistreat another. Interests are too closely interlaced, the 
importance of the welfare of one section to the others would 
consolidate the majority in all against any scheme of injus- 
tice. Although sectional misunderstandings and antagonisms 
produced a long strife ending in a fearful war, with its heated 
passions and bitterness, its reaction of demoralization, impe- 
riousness and hatred, yet the contest did not have its root in 
the hearts, in the character of the people. It was precipita- 
ted by temporary and surface obstacles to an understanding 
which, during its course, were put in the way of extinction. 

The passions it called out, the evils it produced, had not 
force of permanent antagonism to sustain them. The inter- 
ests, the clear common sense, the natural unity of race, of 



THE VALLEY I'KOMO'l'KS KAKMOXY. 495 

principle and of country, forbade them a long existence. The 
sympathies of the inhabitants of the northern Valley flow out 
to the dweller in the Southern States as naturally and irresisti- 
bly as do the waters of the Great Ri ver. A sense of justice, the 
impossil)ility of long withholding natural rights from others, 
is absolute in the mind of the Anglo-America. Freer and 
more cosmopolitan in the Valley tlian elsewhere, the Ameri- 
can citizen there banishes the prejudice or partial views that 
may offend other sections. He is deeply interested in unity 
of territory, of business and of feeling. 

So the country is united in the Valley by all the cords of 
character, of sympathy, of policy, and of interest which bind 
a community into what we call a nation. With the close of 
the war, time only was wanted to produce the strongest 
national sentiment known to history. The free operation of 
the laws of association disposed of every evil existing before, 
or cultivated by. the war, and the powerful influences that 
brouo-ht the g-reat work of reconciliation near to a conclusion 
in twelve years after its close wuth a celerity and irresistible 
force known only to American annals, were, in largest part, 
those springing from the Valley. 

It has nearly eliminated the Southern question, the negro 
question, the States rights question, from politics. The Valley 
requires national union, a harmonious but a decentralized 
government — an indissoluble union, but one which cares for 
all interests, cultivates earnest common sympathies, and leaves 
each locality to attend solely to local affairs. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE NEW UNITY OF THE VALLEY. 

The development of commerce on the Lakes and its move- 
ment through the Erie canal eastward emphasized the growing 
tendency of the country to divide on " Masons and Dixon's 
Line " into North and South. Industries, commerce and 
politics, social, civil and financial differences, tended to over- 
ride and disregard some of the natural unities founded on 
geological and geographical bases. This tendency was resisted 
by the river system until the railroad system was developed, 
when the loosening of the bonds between the upper and lower 
basins of the Valley became the ruling feature. They were 
separated by temporary interests even more effectually 
than by political contests. The course of trade united all 
the free States and secured their success in the civil war. 
It was a fortunate coincidence for the permanence of the 
Union. 

With the close of the war all natural unities began to re- 
assert themselves. The upper and lower parts of the Valley 
were sufficiently various in productions to prevent their being 
rivals in the markets of the East and of the world; they had 
mutual interests of exchange and of commerce that must 
grow larger with every year; they could assist each other^s 
development effectually in many ways, and their greatest 
future welfare required that they should be as closely united 
by social, political and business ties as they were by unbroken 
slopes and levels, and by waterways. 

The lake system and relations with the manufactures and 
commerce of the Northern Atlantic States were only two 
among the numerous connections of the great Valley. It was 
a question if the relations instituted by the Mexican Gulf 

406 



HOW THE RAILWAY PROMOTES UNITY. 497 

would not soon become even more important than those with 
the Nortli Atlantic. 

This tendency to unity had been strong enough to produce 
the Louisiana purchase at the beginning of the century and 
it made the pnxsperity of tlie Valley in the early periods. 
The permanent relations began to regain their influence and a 
new unity was developed. The commerce of the rivers must 
still be comparatively unimportant for some decades ; but 
the necessary preparations that were to In-ing out the full 
value of the river system and the gulf commerce commenced 
at once. In the early stage of their devehjpment the railroad 
and telegraph had been powerful agents of disunion ; tliey 
now spread impartially over the wliole surface and still more 
powerfully promoted the consolidation of every part of the 
Valley into a single business community whose great general 
interests were much more important than any sectional ones 
could be. 

The first great movement was the extension of the railroad 
system to complete the settlement of the extreme West and 
Southwest, wdiich soon became colossal. Settlement in Ne- 
braska, Colorado and on the upper Missouri went on fast but 
was soon much inferior to that in Kansas, Texas and the 
Southwest, generally. Chicago became a market of import- 
ance to Texas, and its business with St. Louis was very large. 
The railroad and telegraph soon bound the northern and 
southern Valley more closely together than at any former 
period. They enlarged the field of Northern activity and 
opened to it various supplies and markets in the South and 
aided the South in its distress to recover from the destruction 
of its capital. 

These movements were fairly underway when the financial 
crisis, that had long been hanging like a black cloud in the 
horizon, broke in storm and disaster over the country. The 
building of railroads beyond the paying point, the diver- 
sion of an immense capital from active business in their con- 
32 



498 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

stniction, the vast investments in manufactures and ma- 
chinery, overthrew the equilibrium of business. The whole 
country suffered. As the civilized world had been doing the 
same thing the trouble was almost universal, and a prolonged 
period of depression, during which a readjustment of business 
and finance was to be made, commenced. 

It was a period of great distress for it struck at the incomes 
of millions of men, paralyzed most manufactures and greatly 
reduced the activities of trade and the earnings of capital. 
But the railroads and the telegraph proved of signal value 
in modifying the eftects of the disaster. The population 
thrown out of labor were redistributed on a large scale; their 
vast activities continued, though at a reduction of gain, and 
never, in the history of the country, had a larger space of 
virgin land been turned into fruitful fields. The East, Eu- 
rope and the 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 of the Valley itself 
must be fed and the Valley farmers were still prosperous, if 
they gained less than before on equal amounts raised. 

During this time the shrinking of values was great, and 
the losses of the extreme East and the extreme West, that is, 
the parts of the country outside of the Valley, were immense. 
They were to be counted by hundreds of millions; but it is 
doubtful if the Valley did not gain. Least of all to suffer 
were the South and Southwest. They had time to build up 
and create resources for the future; what they produced was 
salable and stagnation elsewhere favored the flow of both cap- 
ital and labor to them. But most of all did the agricultural 
interest— the great specialty of the Valley— show its supe- 
riority in solidity — its power to resist shocks — over manufac- 
turing and commercial pursuits. Incomes might be smaller 
but tiie most that was required for a comfortable living was 
raised by the individual farmer; expenses not essential to 
comfort might be diminished, and, as a vast surplus must 
necessarily be in demand to feed others, there must always 
be a moderate income beyond his own needs. It was usually 



THE VALLEY IN A FINANCIAL STOKM. 499 

easy to preserve the ordinary relation of income to outgo and 
the more economical habits gradually acquired were eipiiva- 
lent, in the section itself, to a large increase of income. 

Thus, while the crisis greatly diminished the capital and 
the income of other sections, it probably virtually inci'eased 
both in the Valley. It was equivalent to a transfer of both 
from other parts to the Valley, for there was actual loss else- 
where and actual gain here. Besides, the positive wealth was 
increased by the extensive opening of new sources of income, 
and by the transfer of capital and hibor to this field, where it 
could be most profitably employed. Thus did the Valley 
^' Come to the Front!" It had a stable base founded on the 
most pressing and permanent necessities of mankind. Prob- 
ably the financial crisis was a means of enriching it by many 
hundreds of millions of dollars. 

By the new development it had acquired much greater 
independence. It united in itself agriculture and manufac- 
tures, and the yet undeveloped capacities of its commerce 
could be looked after. If it was not already so it could be- 
come a real world and country in itself, in a broader sense 
than the East or the West; this capacity gave it the character 
of a vast and stable nucleus to the whole country. It had, 
by far, the largest part of the solid unchangeable values; the 
natural, as opposed to the conventional, wealth of the coun- 
try. It w^as the vast rock under which the rest of the country 
took refuge from the fury of the storm; it had the realizable 
assets from which were to come the reconstruction of national 
and business finance after their demoralization. With its 
resources they could not possibly become bankrupt. 

The great development of the Valley after the war, and the 
closer and more profitable relations of all its parts, gave a new 
unity to the whole country. Sectional issues disappeared, or 
tended strongly to vanish. The most favorable feature of its 
influence on the Republic and on modern liberal progress had 
always been its tendency to consolidate the country by inter- 



500 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

est — a centralization of mucli greater permanence and value 
than that resting in government. It ever tended to liberal- 
ize and disperse political power while increasing the adhesive 
tendencies of the Federal units in an equal degree. Tliis was, 
and will continue to be, the true centralization of the country. 
It has no great interests unfriendly to those of the East or 
West. Their development, each in its own line, is its pros- 
perity and its own resources enter a hundred fold more largely 
into the prosperity of those sections than any other whatever. 
They would each become comparatively insignificant without 
the Valley, and the Valley would be unable to dispose of but 
a small portion of its vast products without them. It consol- 
idates and centralizes the country under the most liberal nat- 
ural laws, whicli are never oppressive or tyrannical. It can 
not have an interest in depriving the other sections of any 
deo'ree of freedom or anv source of wealth; and the continual 
demand of its people and business is for the largest freedom 
consistent with equity. True centralization means the widest 
and most perfect harmony of interests. 

The new: unity of the Valley has fairly commenced under 
the universal spread of railroads and telegraphs, and the result- 
ing generalization of interests; it has, however, only begun; 
its great results are in the future. The wealth now locked 
up in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and 
other States, is to become of great importance to the States 
of the northern basin. The exchanges are now great and 
profitable, but when they have increased a hundred fold — as 
they probably will have done by the close of the century — a 
much more complete reciprocity of interests will he estab- 
lished. It will be vastly increased by the commerce of the 
river and the Gulf coast with outside countries, for then the 
overflowing fruits of agriculture and manufactures in the 
center and the north will roll in a great flood down the Mis- 
sissippi. The parts of the Valley will be welded together by 
community of interests and of friendly sympathies based on 
them. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PAST AND PRESENT OF AMERICAN HISTORY. 

The people who laid the foundations of the American Re- 
public, and in wliose character lay its great destiny, came from 
a strong stock. It was chiefly by various branches of this 
race that the Roman Empire was dismem])ered, and under 
their rule modern civilization was gradually organized; their 
blood invigorated the dearenerate Latin races, and their Intel- 
ligence adopted many of the best features of the ancient 
civilization. Their rude energy nowhere had a better train- 
in o- or preserved more of its best force than in the British 
Isles in contest against the Celt or mingling their blood with 
his. Celtic vivacity and fire gave something of liveliness 
and animation to Teutonic strength, and the modern English- 
man came forth the most stirring, sensible and progressive 
of races. 

The modifications of this race in America proved to be in 
a very favorable direction. The conservative Englishman was 
recast in America by a variety of influences during which all 
his latent tendencies to radicalism were called into active play. 
What he inherited from Europe he tested by its usefulness 
under the new conditions ; he dug deeper and founded Eng- 
lish liberties on natural rights ; he reasserted himself, claimed 
all his rights as a man, and constructed new institutions, as 
far as circumstances permitted, on the most radical principles. 
The tenacity, vigor and moderation with which he held to 
this direction after it was undertaken offered something new 
in the history of nations and the result was remarkable. 

It was not possible to carry theory into fact, in all directions 
at once; perhaps some of the theories bordered on the limits 
of the impossible ; but the idea was enunciated and practical 

501 



502 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

wisdom set at work to embody it as far as miglit be. The re- 
sult was worthy of admiration and reverence as a foundation 
and the cliildren proved fairly worthy of the fathers. The two 
leading types of Anglo-Americans are found in the English 
yeoman and the English gentleman ; the early American 
types afterwards transferred to the Yalley and controlling its 
development were the Xew Englander and the Virginian. 
They expanded very happily and in tolerable harmony in the 
Valley. Xot even slavery could give them a fundamental 
divergence; the Southerner was a true and faitliful republi- 
can, so far as his own race was concerned; and the Virginian 
who emigrated fr<jm Kentucky or Tennessee to the free 
States was not excelled by the descendant of the New 
Englander or the Pennsylvanian in devotion to American 
theories. 

In leading traits of character the types completely mingled 
and fused in the free life and severe toil of the pioneer peri- 
ods. Their thoughts, views and tendencies flowed together 
and in time became identical. In fact, all the early Presidents 
but one were of the Virginia type, and excellent samples of 
genuine Americans. Virginia and South Carolina were not 
excelled by Massachusetts and Connecticut in lofty patriotism. 
If one had the somewhat stern logic and morality of the 
English Puritan and the other the looser views and graceful 
dignity of the Cavalier they had equally English good sense in 
practical life, and when brought together in the new settlements 
all distinction was soon lost in the one American type. 
This combination was most excellent and fully carried on the 
original tendency of American development. The conti- 
nental or interior American was flexible, freer from prejudices, 
wider in his sympatlnes and broader in his views; at the same 
time he was strong of will, active and ingenious in execution 
and of undaunted boldness. It was a combination to control 
and mould the millions of foreio-ners who hastened to the 
rich lands of the free West, and was entirely successful. No 



DIVERGENCE OF TYPES NOT REAL. 503 

equally excellent union of amiable and vigorous qualities has 
ever before been observed. 

This union of American tyjies is not yet completely effected, 
for the labor system of the South isolated it and gave prom- 
inence there to the aristocratic tone of Virginia ; but the 
American was there ; slavery proved to be only an incident, 
a temj)orary disturbance, or arrest of one side of Southern 
character, and the removal of it left the underlying tendencies 
free to develop. Nor has slavery been altogether a misfor- 
tune. Many admirable traits grew up in Southern character. 
It became expansive, social, open-handed and generous. If 
the sweetness turned to vinegar, and open-hearted frankness 
to hatred and defiance toward the North, it was largely the 
result of the situation; of an antagonism of interests and re- 
lations that made many of the excellencies of each defects to 
the other. The disagreements, enmities and destructive con- 
tests of nations, classes and individuals, which fill the pages of 
history and spread misery through the world, are mostly the 
result of such unfortunate situations, such unnatural antag- 
onisms. 

Yet, nowhere has so large a population passed through a 
century with so little of fatal collision, and for the simple 
reason that there has been intimate intercourse, healthy, stir- 
ring life and a lair acquaintance with each other. But the 
antagonism of the two labor systems w^as absolute and uncon- 
trollable. Compromises were only possible while there was a 
balance of power between them. They could not exist to- 
gether; they must draw a conventional line and arrest the op- 
eration of natural laws; it was not possible to arrange a basis 
of mutual interest. When this element of necessary disunion 
is thrown out and all Americans can circulate among each 
other, when the laws of common interest can operate freely, 
they find that there is no real diversity of type. The sections 
discover that they have the qualities, the natural harmonies 
of interest, of one family. The interest of one is really the 



504 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

interest of all, and each had the admirable qualities of the 
common ancestors. Many Southerners felt after the war that 
they could endure relations with foreigners better than with 
Americans in contest with whom they had failed, and emi- 
grated to other countries; but they found they had more 
things in common and more chances of success with Ameri- 
can opponents than with foreign friends. 

So the past and present of American history shows, from 
whatever point viewed, that Americans have been run in a 
common mould; that the influences guiding the growth of 
character and of ideas have identified them, brought them 
together, even when they seemed very ditierent from each 
other, and far apart. Americans of all sections are most truly 
and distinctly parts of one nation. They have the real sym- 
pathies, ideas, capacities and common interests that go to con- 
stitute one community, one people and one race. From the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, from British America to the Gulf, this 
has proved to be the case in every period. The Valley and 
the East have not grown apart, but together; they are and 
have been essentially one people. Americans on the Pacific 
are only locally and slightly different from other Americans, 
and every indication goes to show that, as soon as memories 
of contest and bloodshed and great losses can fade and grow 
dim under the influence of time and a new prosperity, the 
South and the North will be equally harmonious. Unity 
and homogeneousness have been the great dominating fea- 
tures of American growth. 

The American idea was that of a political equality which 
should give to each man weight and influence in the cor^trol 
of public measures that affected himself. All Englishmen had 
recognized personal rights, but they were restricted by the 
aristocratic organization of society and the confinement of 
political power to the more fortunate classes. The absolute 
form in which the rights of man were claimed in the Declar- 
ation of Independence gave great definiteness to the popular 



THE AMERICAN IDEA OF MANHOOD. 505 

conception of liberty among a people freeing themselves from 
foreign control and establishing new institutions. They were 
too prudent and practical to go to the same extreme as the 
French people in tlieir revolution; but they did not lose sight 
of the idea; thej carried it out as far as it seemed practicable 
without injuring established order at the time. IlniA-ersal, 
or manhood, suffrage was limited still to some extent by prop- 
erty conditions; but the idea was fixed and made way as to the 
white population. There was very little restriction in the 
West. 

Popular discretion and judgment were distrusted at first, 
and checks to it were devised; but these became a dead letter, 
or were removed, in the course of time, and the people were 
more and more regarded as masters whose will was to be con- 
stantly consulted and respected. The dangers of ignorance 
through the influence of unprincipled men have always troub- 
led American statesmen and patriots, but they have never 
been able to restrict suffrage; and so general did the idea of 
manhood rights become that the ruling majority at the close 
of the Civil War conferred the right to vote on all the freed- 
men who had just escaped from the utter ignorance of slavery. 
It seemed to many ruinous, as the liberal naturalization laws 
and gift of suffrage to the ignorant had seemed to others in 
earlier periods. 

This constant extension of suffrage rights had its inconven- 
iences and dangers. Corruption and abuses were frequently 
the result in the cities and the mass of the colored people 
admitted to the ballot box depended on others for guidance. 
Their entire want of definite ideas and experience i-endered 
them incapable of independent intelligent action. How is it 
that the American Ship of State has not foundered on this 
rock? It has been often thought there was imminent danger, 
yet the catastrophe has never befallen. The Southern States, 
re-admitted to the Union \vith so may ignorant voters and 
restored to the hands of the Southern whites who maintained 



506 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the war for the Confederacy, disapproved that extension of 
the franchise on every ground ; yet it was maintained with- 
out fatal results, and seems likely to be quite as harmless, in 
the long run, as the naturalization of foreigners in earlier times. 

It would certainly have been a dangerous experiment any- 
where else; the fortunate result is due to the superiority of 
natural over conventional law. Social and political organiza- 
tions have an overplus of vital and conservative forces, as 
veo-etables and animals have. Thev can overcome difficulties 
and correct errors, expel obstructions or conform to new con- 
ditions as a human body can expel disease or become accli- 
mated. A law of equilibrium is observed in all nature and it 
is only necessary that it be allowed to act freely to maintain 
all things in place. American institutions and habits have 
been more perfectly conformed to natural law than any other, 
and the self-regulating principle has been allowed its widest 
possible range. It.has savedlhe country in every peril. This 
freedom of action was almost unlimited in the North, while it 
was set aside in all things that related to slavery in the South. 
The result was a growth incomparably greater and stronger 
in the North, and a trial of that comparative strength must 
inevitably be against the South, while a free development 
would have left the sections fairly equal. 

The American system has a healthy vigor and fullness of 
vitality equal to every possil)le difficulty. The general judg- 
ments of the Amei-ican mind reveal a clearness and accuracy 
of estimate that renders fatal catastrophes quite impossible. 
There being little restraint on party or individual action they 
can accommodate themselves to all circumstances and crises. 
There is a much clearer comprehension of political issues than 
the amount of general education would measure, for Ameri- 
cans are educated the most fully on political topics, and possess 
a vast amount of political sagacity and tact. They have the 
excellent ffi ft of allowinc: thino-s to take their course when no 

& OCT 

matter of immediate personal interest or public peril is in- 



GOOD SENSE AND MANLINESS IN THE AMERICAN CITIZEN. 507 

volved, and quietly pursue personal ends; but when a serious 
danger threatens they spring into action. Tliey have also 
something of the shrewdness and impassiveness of the Eng- 
lish, of tlieir disinclination to disturb the existing order, to 
make the best of a situation lest hasty action should make a 
worse. Discontent commonly contents itself with discussion, 
grumbling, prophesying evil, acting with the party and really 
making the best of things as they are. So Americans really 
do very few important things in haste. 

The ignorant and degraded, on obtaining the right of suf- 
frage, are raised in their own esteem and are treated with 
consideration by parties and politicians. Gradually they 
learn to think and judge correctly in politics even if igno- 
rant as to other things. There is always less ignorance on 
critical subjects than appears on the surface, and a man treated 
as such soon feels and acts as such ; learns to discriminate 
within reasonable bounds and to be amenable to reason in 
general. Thus the country that recognizes a man. as such, 
finds that she has a vast sum of manliness when that quality 
is pressingly needed. There is no possible danger from which 
the quality she has so carefully cultivated will not save her. 

Not that there has appeared a miracle of i)urity, dignity 
and nobility in the details of American history. Men have 
been still more or less vicious; more or less forgetful of high 
aims in pursuing individual ends. Every generation has 
feared and cried out against its own evils, v/hich have been 
neither few nor small. Improvement has been as impercep- 
tible as natural growth always is, and it has been the less no- 
ticeable that it has been general. Great crises that awaken 
enthusiasm produce a glow and brightness among its nobler 
men which renders them distir.guished, and early American 
history was remarkable for many men distinguished for high- 
mindedness. Later times, for the most part, have less raised 
individuals to special renown than elevated the tone of the 
whole people so that they jippreciated the noble work done 



508 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

bj the founders of the Republic, and, amidst all the selfish 
interests and rivalries of ordinary life, sustained it and carried 
it forward toward completion. That is the greatest possible 
praise, especially when there was unusual freedom to pursue 
selfish interests. 

The general system reacts favorably on men; the adjust- 
ment leaves every man to live out his own life; the responsi- 
bility for maintaining order and justice has been thrown on 
the general public and has required men to think and act for 
the general welfare. All these have appealed to the good 
sense and better nature of common citizens sufficiently to 
lead them to act in a higher strain than any people have ever 
done before. On the whole, there has been a large average 
of true progress with every generation since the settlements 
of the English colonies in America commenced. 



CHAPTEK XIX. 

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT AND EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY. 

American deuiocracj was transplanted from Europe. It 
had its remote root in the nature of races wliich refused to 
accept civilization, as did the old Asiatic and many later races, 
at the hands of an absolute despotism. They maintained 
many liberties as progress among them went on. Yet, the 
royal, the noble, the rich and the educated classes gathered 
the most of the public power into their hands during Feudal 
times and for centuries later, even where the independent spirit 
was strongest in the people. As learning spread and became 
more thorough and true, and as the increasing range of activ- 
ity and gain demanded more freedom of action, both theory 
and interest revived the original self-assertion of the primitive 
man. A movement against privileged classes, among those of 
the people who felt themselves mentally their equals or su- 
periors, was quickened by the arrogance with which those 
classes asserted their conventional superiority and their 
actual power, and this formed the beginning of an intelligent 
democracy in most of the nations of Europe. 

Yet, society was so firmly constructed on class rule that a 
real and true democracy could not hope to succeed. The 
larger masses of the people were too humble, too ignorant, 
too powerless and too much intimidated by the splendors of 
power and rank to rise against them except in the blind fury 
of passion at some extreme injustice to sink back into their 
ordinary submission when a temporary vengeance had been 
taken or attempted. Many Europeans who settled in the 
English colonies were of the few who disputed the principle 
of class rule and who sought relief from a galling oppression. 
They were intelligent, energetic and sufficiently numerous 

509 



510 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and influential to lay new foundations in the wild solitudes 
of the New AVorld. 

Yet, the theory that only the higher of classes a nation 
were capable of governing it, continued to maintain its place 
almost universally in Europe, and much pride of caste found 
its way across the sea. European notions of respectability 
and rank were fostered by the form of coloni».l governments 
and their connection with the mother country, and held no 
small place in the public mind down to the times of the 
Revolution. 

To establish so complete a democracy was to undertake an 
experiment ; it was to bring the radical theories of scholars 
and the aspirations of the lower classes to a final test. At 
that time, indeed, few scholars dared to go so far even in 
theory; and the people, as masses, had scarcely conceived such 
a complete change as possible. But the higher tone, great 
independence and intelligence of the common people in the 
colonies would not have permitted organization on a strictly 
European model. The whole tendency of life in the New 
World was to bring the different classes nearer to a common 
level; but still it was with many misgivings, and because no 
other plan could be agreed upon, that all class distinctions 
were swept away from the political field as to the white, or 
European race, but property conditions still limited the number 
of voters, and various checks to injudicious and hasty popular 
action were devised. 

The separation of the settlements into colonies independent 
of each other, favored popular liberty and a democratic or- 
ganization of the General Government. These, as States, 
unwillingly accepted a superior ; allowed it control over 
none but the most general interests, to reserve the field, 
as much as possible, to State control. In the States the feojple 
were strong without being violent, but asserted themselves 
with emphasis. All things were favorable to the experiment 
of a government founded on the political equality of its citi- 



RESULT OF THE DEMOCRATIC EXPERIMENT. 511 

zens, and it went into operation on a basis sufficiently l)road 
to make it a real test of the capacity of the masses of the 
people for self-government. 

The success of the experiment would naturally he declared 
by persistence in maintaining the system and by general ])ros- 
])erity under it. A hundred year.s after independence was 
declared, and ninety years after the system was formally or- 
ganized in detail by the Constitution, found tlie system more 
tirmly seated than ever and the prosperity through the centuiy, 
as a whole, entirely unexampled in the history of nations, 
both for breadth and volume. The old theory was, that the 
people were, and could only be, minors, who must be kept 
under the guardianship and government of the intelligent 
classes — that is those who, by birth, advantages and success 
in life, were assumed to be alone capable of seeing what was 
best for them. 

The new theory declared that all men had an equal right 
to decide what was best for themselves, to select the de- 
positaries and agents of public power, to manage all common 
interests among themselves and to demand that no artificial 
barriers should shut them out from the contest for the prizes 
of life. 

The success of the Republic has been accepted by the woi-ld 
as a decisive condemnation of the old theory of government. 
America is stronger by all the practice in statesmanship of 
its masses, by all the intelligence and self-respect this practice 
has developed, by the wider and more equable distribution 
of its wealth, and by all the Inisiness energies and skill it has 
given freer play and a larger field. This success is not only 
the pride and happiness of the American people ; it has 
solved the problem of the world. It has not only shown that 
the people can take better care of their own interests than 
self-appointed guardians, but also how they can become 
strong, intelligent and persistent enough to maintain personal 
and national rights. They have grown up in the sight of 



512 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the world from three millions of poor agriculturists, strug- 
gling for a firm foothold on the borders of the continent, to 
near fifty millions, with almost a thousand millions of prop- 
erty to each million of inhabitants, their republic seated 
securely in the heart of the continent, ruling from ocean to 
ocean, and just prepared to enter on the full development of 
its colossal resources, only at the threshold of a great and 
brilliant career of the truest and most solid progress. 

Europe is also progressive, for democracy did not lose all 
its advocates, notwithstanding multitudes of them came to 
settle America. Through the nineteenth century, especially, 
it has drifted fast toward liberal forms of government. Its 
progress was necessarily slow, for it had the organizations and 
theories that had been accumulating for eighteen centuries to 
modify. This work of preparation was the main feature until 
1860, but the following fifteen years indicated that it had com- 
menced the work of a massive reconstruction. The modifica- 
tion of institutions and modes of government began to take 
large proportions and the re-distribution of power was very 
general throughout Europe. 

The more striking events which indicated the direction and 
strength of the tendencies that were everywhere liberalizing 
governments and transferring power from the privileged classes 
to the people at large — or to ever larger masses outside those 
orders — were the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, the es- 
tablishment of a Republic in France, and the development of 
constitutional monarchies into distinct and pronounced par- 
liamentary governments. The village communities of the 
Russian peasants had always preserved some of the forms and 
memories of a democratic government among the lower orders 
of the people. They had not been permitted very much real 
and vital action, except in the economy of the labor sj^stem, 
until property in serfs was abolished by this act of emancipa- 
tion. That gave them a chance to become a living democratic 
organization, and made it possible for a large amount of free- 



RISE OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE. 5 IS 

dom to be dispersed among the masses of the people. It was 
the date of a new era for a great nation, althongh tlie changes 
sure to grow out of it must occupy some generations. 

The establishment of the French Republic, ten years later, 
was accomplished with the suddenness and completeness char- 
acteristic of that nation. It occurred at the moment of great 
military disasters, and while the country was being invaded by 
a foreign army; but the Republic distinguished itshrst years 
of power by three acts of great wisdom and prudence, which 
apparently settled it on a firmer basis than any European 
Republic has ever known in the past. It suppressed the ex- 
treme radicals, or communists, and established a conservative 
Republic with a parliamentary government; it displayed great 
ability in reconstructing the finances and restoring the mate- 
j-ial prosperity of the country after the immense losses of 
defeat and invasion, and a great indemnity to the conqueror; 
and it preserved great moderation in the contest with monarch- 
ical parties which sought to overthrow it. All these showed 
self-control on the part of the people, and a strength that 
promised order and security to industry. It was a signal 
evidence of democratic progress in Europe. 

Popular uprisings against despotism just previous to 1850,. 
and the concessions made to quiet them by monarchical gov- 
ernments in the ten years following, had secured Constitutions 
regulating the exercise of powder in all the countries of South- 
ern and Central Europe. These concessions were followed by 
the loss of personal control over the legislative and executive 
branches of government by the hereditary ruler and the sub- 
stitution of a ministry, or cabinet of officials, whose measures 
and policy must be in accord with the majority of the legis- 
lature elected by the voting classes. These classes now in- 
cluded all, at least, of the prosperous in the community. This 
is called a " parliamentary " government. As those allowed to 
vote included a large proportion of the people, and their dele- 
gates could legally control and determine the policy of the 
33 



514 THE MISSISSIPPI VAI.LEY. 

government — a modified democracy was definitely established. 
It was long before this system came into good working order, 
and although the influence of the higher classes, when that 
was done, wus still extremely great in many ways, it was, 
notwithstanding, a great advance toward popular government. 
England has had a parliamentary government for nearly three 
hundred years, although the basis of representation in the 
parliament was very limited until 1832, and the aristocratic 
classes are still largely represented in it — an American would 
say unduly. Yet, they have usually been very patriotic and 
liberal. Since 1867 the elective franchise has been extended, 
the better part of the laboring classes being now represented 
as well as the more prosperous " middle " classes. 

In this fifteen years public opinion has become the virtual 
ruler of Europe. This public opinion leaves out, as a direct 
influence, many of those who, in America, have as much weight 
by their votes as the richest gentleman or most prosperous mer- 
chant, manufacturer or farmer; but they make themselves felt, 
through combinations and associations, as a growing power, and 
are listened to from fear, if from no higher motive. To bring 
about this promising state of things the example and pros- 
perity of England has had great weight ; the spread of wealth 
and prosperity to larger and larger numbers has contributed 
much to it; and a better understanding of the principles of 
political science generally has helped greatly. An important 
influence in liberalizing government policy in Europe has been 
the fear of revolutions, of which there were so many in the first 
half of the century; and the necessity of courting the favor of 
the people to induce them to support the large armies which 
every European government feels it necessary to maintain has 
helped the liberties of the people in some ways while hinder- 
ing them in others. These are all forces purely European, and 
many others less prominent have contributed to strengthen the 
movement toward democratic liberty; but one of the strong- 
est influences to quicken all these into vigorous and rapid 



INFLUENCE OF AMERICA ON EUROPE. 515 

action has been the success of the grand ex})eriment in 
America. 

European thought, culture and ciiaracter furnished the theo- 
ries and the men to develop them, and sent them to the toil 
and unrestricted activities of the New World. There the theo- 
ries were worked out with a fullness and thoroughness impos- 
sible in an old society. Europe looked on half doubting and 
amazed, but much moved. The first great reaction was on 
the French, who, on the definite establishment of the Ameri- 
can Republic, raised the cry " Liberty, Fraternity, Equality," 
swept aside all established order and reduced all its ])eople to 
the level of citizens by acts of the most terrible and bloody 
violence. It was republicanism gone mad, and turned man- 
kind sick with horror. All Europe rose against it. It was 
incapable of the wise moderation required to form a strong 
and stable organization, and failed, leaving a stigma of shame 
and guilt, and a memory of fear and dread to the name of 
popular liberty. Yet the people had learned that they were 
strong and the Western Republic remained unshaken and 
prosperous. The experiment was disastrous in the one case 
but the demonstration in the other was favorable. It inspired 
the courage of peoples and proved the theories of enthusiasts. 

Many revolutions in the course of fifty years were failures; 
personal and aristocratic governments believed the only secu- 
rity against the overthrow of society and the destruction of 
civilization was in suppressing them with severity. Remnants 
of republicanism were preserved in France by the Empire 
and transmitted to the future, and, notwithstanding repression, 
the spirit of democracy spread widely in Europe, cheered and 
sustained by the rising success of American institutions. 
The effect was very marked on England and led at once to a 
more liberal policy with her colonies. Her own people had 
fairly comprehended the significance of American independ- 
ence and its success, and demanded great reforms. Between 
1820 and 184:0 they had been introduced on an important 



51G THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

scale at home and in many of the colonies, which soon acquired 
liberties substantially as great tbrtlieir needs as in the United 
States, the more general level of conditions in a new country 
rendering the institution of parliamentary governments in 
them more democratic in their practical workings than in 
the mother country. 

The striking success of a completely democratic govern- 
ment in the great Republic, the prosperity of the English 
colonies, and the good effect of enlarging the base of freedom 
in England itself, kept the tendencies toward democracy in 
Europe ccjnstant and strong, notwithstanding the fears and 
resistance of the ruling classes. Millions of the European 
peasantry flocked to the land of liberty and equality and 
gave larger space to those they left beiiind, which materially 
improved the condition of all. They became generally pros- 
perous and respectable freemen and citizens, which reacted on 
the character and consideration of the classes they had sprung 
from across the ocean. 

In a thousand ways the influence of America helped to 
quicken the regeneration of Europe. When the Civil War 
closed, with an undivided country freed from an anomaly and 
a breeder of mischief, with far better prospects than ever by 
such a demonstration of unsuspected strength in democratic 
institutions, the reaction on Europe was profound. It helped 
to plead the cause of the people with the intelligent and ren- 
dered the masses of the people confident and decided in 
demanding larger liberties, and the ultimate supremacy of 
democracy in all civilized lands was settled. Governments 
and ruling classes yielded more and more, and progress 
became constant. America has been the school of the 
nations. 

In society, as in the organic and chemical world, every- 
thing is in a state of unstable equilibrium — that is to say, 
the dominion of change is universal. No relations are abso- 
lutely permanent. However slow, change is going on cease- 



I'ROGUKSS IS IJV SVSTKM AND LAW. 517 

lessly, and this mutability is controlled by law as certainly 
and absolutely as the circulation of the blood or the flow of 
a river. The order of the universe, with all its processes, ac- 
tivities and ultimate ends, is placed under the supervision of 
this law. Numerous intermediate stages lead to provisional 
ends, and the temporary relations and tendencies often seem 
to conflict with each other and to oppose themselves to the 
general sweep and grand aim of the system of forces; but 
this appearance arises, always, from an imperfect comprehen- 
sion of relations, forces and their ends. The Intelligence that 
guides them all never works blindly or unavailino-lv. 

European and American history have been the expression 
of a single phase of progress, or system of social and politi- 
cal development, which is to broaden and deepen until it em- 
braces the destinies and promotes the welfare of the entire 
human race. Under the law of change, or development, each 
institution, each social, political, or intellectual force in Eu- 
rope and America has played its useful part in the progress 
of the whole system toward its flnal end — the highest and 
truest civilization. This high end can only be reached when 
all the powers of the individual and of the whole body of 
men are developed to their fullest and best action. This im- 
plies the amplest liberty for each and all ; and therefore the 
freest institutions declare the nearest approach toward the 
grand aim. 

But all the parts of a system are intimately bound to- 
gether ; they change in harmony, and movement in one 
part assists movement in the others. So America and 
Europe interlock. The democratic ideas and inhabitants of 
America were of European origin. They were transferred 
to America to develop in freedom and at ease. Europe had 
still the same ideas and tendencies, and ev^ery sign of progress 
here had a corresponding influence there. Liberty on the 
two continents has developed in unison. A conservative, 
orderly, yet progressive, democracy had few hindrances here; 



518 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

it had many there ; but the force of progress here had the 
effect of a motive power there. Thus, by the law of change, 
which embraces all relations and impulses, movement cor- 
responded on each side of the Atlantic. America and Europe 
are one. 

By these relationships and this mutual influence, all the 
mature experiences and thought of Europe benelit America, 
and every phase of politics and prosperity in America ben- 
efits Europe. The great resources of the Valley, the free 
character, the intelligence, the enterprise, the noble institu- 
tions it nourishes, benefit Europe and humanity as well as it& 
own possessors and the Republic at large. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A HISTORY OF THE I'ROPIIETS OF EVIL. 

In looking over the resources of the regions included in 
the Mississippi Valley they have been found deep and abund- 
ant; studying the progress, from decade to decade, in uiak- 
ing them available for the use of man a rapid enlargement 
has been noticed, and that enlargement has never been so 
wonderful and massive as in the last ten years; the growth 
of population lias been something marvelous; the poverty, 
roughness and looseness of frontier life have been seen to dis- 
appear with the increase of numbers and the means of trans- 
portation that made resources available for all the purposes of 
a complete and costly civilization. With wealth came refine- 
ment; temporary political and other institutions gave place 
to permanent ones admirably adjusted to the requirements of 
an intelligent, moral and essentially upright people. General 
progress seems to have been nearly uniform through every 
development of life in the great Valley as in other parts of 
the country. 

But this is following rapidly down the stream of events and 
observing results rather than processes. All this has not been 
gained without toil and sacrifices, without storms and black 
clouds, often threatening disaster. Human nature is the same 
in the Mississippi Valley as elsewhere; it has not always turned 
its best side to the observer, nor always been in its best 
mood. Freedom often seemed to encourage license, and those 
who were prone to dwell on the dark side of life have found 
much to beget gloom and dismal forebodings. Every gen- 
eration has had its share of the trials of life and its Prophets 
of Evil. We can smile at their prophecies now and see how 
false they were; but there were real and threatening evils in 

519 



520 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

the view of those who did not comprehend tlie healthy con- 
structive vigor that dwelt in a new society filled with the sap 
of a young life. Freedom lets loose the evil as well as the 
good, and the young communities suftered the evils as well as 
reaped the fruits of liberty. A country in its youth " sows 
its wild oats" like any other youth, and ''learns wisdom by 
the things it suffers." The mistake of the prophets was that 
they took the real evils for permanent characteristics, instead 
of passing phases, of the process of development. 

The more dreadful forebodings as to the outcome of these 
institutions were felt in the first years of the century, while the 
experiment was yet immature. The bitterness of parties was 
never so great. The French Kevolution had experienced an 
epoch of " white terror " and horrible excesses; then France 
had passed into the hands of an absolute master. Jefferson 
and his party were understood to sympathize with French 
ideas, and the opposite party saw every reason to fear and 
dread their reign ; while the democratic party feared the 
establishment of a despotism by the Federalists, who thought 
a strong central government necessary. Many exj^ected the 
Constitution to perish under popular excesses or by the stern 
hand of despotism. We know Americans better by this time, 
but there seemed real danger of unliappy precedents being 
established in the days of inexperience. 

The pioneers of the West had been mostly uncultured men 
of the backwoods; they lived a rude life and had a pitiless 
foe to fight away from their cabins and families. There was 
danger that they would become barbarous, revengeful and 
bloodthirsty; that, having received little aid from the States 
while struggling against and conquering their great difficul- 
ties, they would j^ield to the temptations which so many evil 
ambitions were spreading before them, and join the French, or 
the English, or the Spanish, or follow the promptings of Aaron 
Burr and others, and undertake a dangerous and stormy inde- 
pendence. There were men in abundance on the borders who 



TIIKEATENED DANGERS QUIETLY UISAPPEAK. 521 

were upposed capable of any infuinyand willing to serve any 
chief for booty and a lawless life. Yet, how few were really 
ready to listen let the utter failure of Burr's schemes declare. 

From this time (1807) to 1830, Western and Southwestern 
life was much studied and ])ro])hesied about. The life was 
riul'j and wanting, for the time, in many of the essentials of a 
high civilization. The young grew up in ignorance; over- 
flowing with boisterous vigor they seemed to promise an after- 
life of excesses dangerous to social order and fatal to well- 
regulated liberty. The institutions of the Yalley would fall 
into their hands, the responsibility of maintaining them in 
strength and purity seemed too great for them. It was 
thought a rock over which the Republic was sure to stumble 
to her downfall; yet, what generation has more honorably 
or faithfully done its work than that which ruled from 1830 
to 1850? 

There were dangers in other directions. If their uncul- 
tured instincts were true to liberty and the principles of the 
fathers, they had the details of statesmanship to conduct. The 
legislative halls were filled with bold but unlearned young 
lawyers, farmers and men who had no experience in finance 
and political economy. How could they manage these grave 
subjects without fatal injury to public and private interests? 
Indeed, many sad. mistakes actually occurred ; the wildest 
theories of banking and general finance sometimes carried 
them away, and the West was flooded with worthless money. 
Many private fortunes were ingulfed, distress was general, 
and serious burdens were entailed on the public for many 
years. What but ruin could come of ignorant rashness raised 
to such dangerous eminence? Yet general progress pursued 
her tranquil way, the errors were corrected by the ignorant 
generation that had itself made them and all trace of their ill 
effects soon disappeared. 

The great freedom allowed to individual enterprise and 
aspiration might give full play to passion, to intrigue and 



522 THE MISSISSIPPI V^ULLEy. 

corruption where an unlearned and ignorant people were the 
ultimate sovereigns — the depositaries of power. What dangers 
were not to he feared from the intrigues, the misrepresenta- 
tions of dishonest demagogues? It was sadly feared that all 
that was just and truthful would disappear in a wholesale scram- 
ble after power and place; that the habit of dishonesty and 
self-seeking would be the ruin of public affairs. No more 
eager, wily, successful wire-pullers and underhanded diplomat- 
ists have been known in any public life than have been some- 
times found among this shrewd, ingenious race. What better 
opportunities did crafty men ever enjoy of " engineering " 
themselves into a fortune than were oirered by the confusion 
and sudden wholesale spread of settlement over the West 
from 1820 to 1850? How many became immensely wealthy 
by planning and managing, by false representations and under- 
hand dealing? There seemed the most imminent danger that 
the want of strict supervision, of a pure and high-toned pub- 
lic sentiment, would allow the virus of dishonesty to spread 
through society and afflict it with a fatal disease. 

How should a generation brought up in ignorance appreci- 
ate the value of education, and, where population increased 
with such rapidity, how could they be expected to make the 
provision for the intelligence of the future that would save a 
society rapidly increasing in power from going to ruin ? These 
and a thousand other dangers seemed to portend certain destruc- 
tion to morality, justice and order in the near future. There 
have not been wanting multitudes of prophets to point out all 
these dangers. To them the failure of democratic liberty was 
proved. They could see few redeeming features in the situa- 
tion; only a rapid degeneracy of an originally staunch and 
upright race. It has usually been the party out of poAver who 
have pointed out all these ruinous tendencies. They could 
clearly see what was amiss for they could reap no benefits 
from wrong doing, and many from getting it l)elieved that 
their opponents were the authors of the evil. With the heat 



EXPERIENCE TEACHES AMERICANS EFFECTUALLY. 523 

and earnestness characteristic of Americans they often piislied 
their argument to extremes and increased an evil they were 
supposed to be laboring to cure. 

Slavery was a contradiction to the peculiar American idea, 
a cause of weakness in numerous ways, and a constant tnenace 
to the stability of the Union. Yet, slavery has long been 
dead; the disa])pearance of about a fourth part of the great 
public debt produced by the Civil War and the existence 
of a better currency than was ever had in earlier times have 
proved that the people are not wanting in financial skill or 
honesty. The generally accurate and successful working of 
the vast and complicated machinery required for the conduct 
of the public business of a most active and wealthy nation of 
nearly fifty million souls indicates that dishonesty has not 
triumphed. The evils were transient, at least in their virulent 
form; they were quite inevitable; and it would have been of 
all things the most undesirable that the natural freedom, from 
which they were inseparable in a new country, should have 
been disturbed by forces from without really strong enough 
to suppress them. The special value of American democracy, 
of the free and popular form of its republican institutions, 
was in the unrestrained growtli of all the ])eople under the 
discipline of an independent life. To learn by experience is 
to learn thoroughly; defeats as well as triumphs teach. The 
experience of a life which must rule itself, correct its own 
errors and repair its defeats from its own resources, is the 
best possible education. It develops the eharacte?' from its 
roots to its topmost bough; it brings out all the manliness 
and genuine worth that is in the people. 

The evils that have been prophesied about as certain signs 
of approaching ruin by grave histoi'ians and intelligent 
travelers from Europe, that liave ])roduced foreboding hope- 
lessness in a small minority of thoughtful, but net very 
penetrating, American patriots, and that have always formed 
the staple of party oratory and invective, have gradually but 



524 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

surely disappeared in the process of growth and under the 
teaching, often severe, of experience. Having to hear both 
sides of a question the people were the judges and, with 
many mistakes, learned how to judge correctly in the end. 
The self-seeking and dishonest came to be less and less se- 
lected for high positions, for the people were free to set them 
aside as soon as they were fairly convicted of sin. Wire- 
pulling diplomacy has learned to consult public opinion 
and be guided by it. It no longer hopes to control and make 
public opinion. Parties oftset each other and neutralize each 
other's heat and exaggeration; business interests learn not to 
endanger success by over-selfishness, but to seek it in a 
general harmony with recognized principles ; truth and 
justice are found to pay best in the long run, in every walk 
of life. American life meets with no evils that are irreme- 
diable, because there is no invincible power behind which 
wrong can shelter itself. 

Public policy and public men pass periodically before the 
tribunal of the people for approval or condemnation ; this 
produces profound respect for them by public servants, 
and respect for themselves among the people. Among all 
possible modes of elevating a great community this is 
incomparably the most eifective ; therefore, the early faults 
of ignorance, of boastfulness, of hastening into action be- 
fore maturity of consideration has l)een given to a subject, 
have become more and more rare. The people are found 
capable of a slow, considerate, but final, judgment from which 
nothing can move it ; of a fixed and permanent resolution 
which they were supposed never to show till revealed in a 
century's history of the Republic. They used to be judged 
by republics of the past in which fickleness and various grow- 
ing vices were the rule. But no republic that ever existed, 
of any size, had any real claim to the name beside that of the 
United States. In them the few w^ere always the masters of 
the many; the base of public power was narrow and the 



HOW THE TKOPIIECIES PROVED TO BE FALSE. 525- 

masses were oppressed as in governments with a less lionor- 
able or ])opiilur name. Only in America did ])ower really 
descend to the lowest strata of society and a real ])o!itical 
equality become universal. 

Therefore, tlie prophecies of the pnjphets proved false ; 
there was no real parallel in the cases on which their reason- 
ing was based; and they left out of view the regenerating 
forces that lay beneath the surface. Public opinion is found 
to be, in the k)ng run, as much more reliable than class or 
private opinion as its base is wider; and all wise men have 
learned from American history to respect it accordingly. 

Europe has learned the same lesson from its own improved 
experiences and none of its governments are so strong as those 
where the base of the political fabric is broadest ; where all 
classes may speak, are listened to, and their judgment accepted 
as parts of public opinion. A government founded on the 
manhood of all its people has the utmost strength of which 
a government is susceptible, embraces all the recuperative 
and progressive energies which lie in the possibilities of man 
himself. Such a government is indestructible because man 
has inexhaustible capacities of growth. There is no limit to 
his possible attainments, with time and opportunity to grow 
freely. Therefore, all prophets of ruin are false prophets. 
Uncounted and great evils have existed and still exist; but 
they are essentially limitations, vices of the time, vices of 
ignorance, of shortsightedness and mistake which, in a society 
free to expand and to learn, must necessarily fall away and 
disappear. 

These false prophets usually urge a system of immediate 
action and strenuous effort by a limited class whose energies, 
rightly directed and with a giv'en force and persistence, are 
to save society. It is, however, a false doctrine, for if society 
does not possess the power of saving itself, if the regenerating 
influence does not exist in itself, no outside power can save it. 
Its own vitality is the only force equal to the work. Nor can. 



526 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

its forces be persuaded to act out of season. They decline to 
be hurried or controlled. In due time any designated point 
of power and excellence can be reached, and will be reached, 
by the simple and natural process of development from 
within. The people so filled with alarm and distress vex 
themselves and others in vain, for when the right point of 
growth has come the desired reformation occurs spontane- 
ously. They may seriously disturb that process and defer it, 
if they are successful in gaining converts to their views, but 
they can only help it by a quiet attention to their own up- 
rightness and conforming their own lives to the highest truth 
they see. 

Many countries in Europe secure an enforced regularity 
and appearance of excellence that is not found, as yet, in the 
United States. A degree of apparent confusion and real 
disorder may exist, in various forms, that compare unfavora- 
bly with the exactness obtained under a strong centralized 
government; but the evil which exists because its time for 
being thrown off by growth has not come is preferable, in 
general, to its suppression by an arbitrary force that does not 
spring naturally from the society afiected. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE AMERICA OF THE FUTURE. 



In its most essential features American history has been a 
record of successes. Its struggle has been constantly embar- 
rassed bv a rapid growth that added new elements to be 
moulded and harmonized before the old elements had been fully 
mastered; but with the heavier task came increasing strength. 
American progress has been through difficulties; but difficul- 
ties well borne are lessons well learned; and the country has 
never been so patient, so wise, so strong and united as at the 
close of its first hundred years of successful combat with 
obstacles. Its future is full of promise. 

The only afflictions the Western Continent had suffered 
that were almost purely evil, and that in a high degree, had 
risen from the efforts of European governments to establish 
their own arbitrary, restrictive and selfish systems of state 
and class policy in their colonies. Under those systems, 
wherever established, the virgin wealth that could be imme- 
diately realized was wasted, and the fountains of prosperity 
flowed but languidly or were dried up altogether; the natives 
suffered immense and cruel injustice, revolting to humanity; 
and the European settlers under such forms of government 
lost the progressive tendencies which their several nationali- 
ties still showed at home and became degenerate. During 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century, however, most of 
these European colonies, inspired by the example of the 
United States, declared their independence and asked its 
reco2:nition as self-governing republics. Soon after the Con- 
stitution of the United States had gone into successful 
operation the republican government was solicited to inter- 
fere in favor of freedom in Europe. This it refused to do, 

527 



528 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

and established the precedent of non-interference, as a govern- 
ment, with the quarrels and contests of others. It would 
be at peace with all the world so long as its interests and 
dignity were not attacked. On the other hand, it offered a 
refuge to all who chose to come to it, and citizenship on the 
most reasonable terms. 

Its war with England, closing in 1815, had been chiefly 
caused by its determination to protect these adopted citizens 
when claimed by the governments to which they formerly 
owed allegiance, and it now determined that, while it adhered 
to its policy of non-intervention with the internal affairs of 
Europe, the various governments on that side the Atlantic 
should not extend their possessions in America. The Spanish- 
American republics were recognized and America was hence- 
forth devoted to freedom. 

This principle of Atnerican policy was distinctly set forth 
by President Monroe, in 1822, and received the popular name 
of " the Monroe Doctrine." The United States Congress 
virtually ratified it by the act of recognizing the South 
American republics as, by right, free from European control. 

This was the only overt act of defiance of the absolutism 
and ambition of foreign nations; to a certain extent it placed 
itself as a defender in front of the new republics and reserv^ed 
the ~New World to Americans, or, at least, to such institutions 
as actual residents in it should determine to establish. It was 
a proud position to take, for it proclaimed itself the leader and 
champion of a third part of the earth. The fruit of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, supported as it was by the development and 
growth in power of the Great Republic, was to encourage 
the freedom of American nations, to quicken the spread 
of its own principles from the Polar Sea to Cape Horn, and to 
maintain the tendency of all the dawning nationalities toward 
democracy. The abolition of slavery and the rapid movement 
given to industrial activities by its vast railroad system made 
it the center of influences much more powerful in acquiring 



VALUABLE FIIUITS OF THE '' MONROE DOCTRINE." 529 

real eminence as a leader in the two Americas than any pos- 
sible conquests by war or skill in diplomacy. 

Its influence on England was probably considerable, leading 
her to treat her remaining American colonies with wise liber- 
ality, and they soon obtained all the real liberties possessed in 
the United States. The difficulty of constructing, and es])e- 
cially of maintaining, true republics in the Spanish American 
States was nearly as great as it could be. They had not the 
original base of character on which the discipline of poverty • 
and labor reacted so happily in the thirteen English colonies 
and in the Valley of the Mississippi; they had no previous 
gradual training in self-government; the rule must long be 
that of a comparatively small class of whites of European 
descent. But for the success and example of the United 
States they woukl probably have failed. It did not interfere 
with them directly, but it had itself a success so shining that 
it encouraged them and the Monroe Doctrine was a virtual 
protection against European intrigues and attacks. Under 
the shadow of the Great Republic their democratic institu- 
tions maintained themselves, notwithstanding the effijrts of 
innumerable private ambitions breaking out in revolutionary 
attempts. A true conception of republican liberty gradually 
spread among the people and ever larger numbers became 
enlightened and capable of w^orking wisely for the common 
good. Thus the Monroe Doctrine was fruitful of good in 
the two Americas. 

From this historical growth of republicanism, and from the 
impulse toward prosperity given by the wide-reaching influ- 
ence of its industries and great development, the country 
seated in the Mississippi Yalley, to a certain degree, unified 
the growth and interests of both North and South America. 
This w^as in a remote and preliminary way until the lower 
Vallev was relieved of its embarrassing labor system. This 
feature was strengthened materially,after that event,by increas- 
ing moral influence, by greater industrial influence, and by 
34 



530 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

multiplied commercial relations; but its full significance is to 
be developed in the future. Harmony of institutions, variety 
of products and boundless natural resources in almost every 
part of both North and South America will make their future 
relations extremely valuable. The capital and enterprise of 
the prosperous Republic of the North will send the pulses of 
her own energy, in constantly more powerful waves, through 
the whole length of her own continent. The same thrift and 
wisely ordered activity will be constantly encouraged. The 
Gulf of Mexico will begin, by and by, to assume its proper 
position as the highway of the most active commerce, and lead 
to the closest relations of interest. 

But the Yalley is much more the uniting bond and the rul- 
ing center of North America. While the work of general 
settlement within it and the United States at large continues, 
and until development has tolerably filled all the channels of 
trade, the relations of the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon 
race in North America may be comparatively few. The rich 
soil and many advantages of the V^alley and of the mines and 
valleys of the Pacific Slope and Rocky Mountains now draw 
a large proportion of settlers because the immediate future is 
better assured by the growing wealth and activity about 
them; but later all the available parts of British America 
will be filled. The extension of the Valley in a continental 
trough northward and the common interests that must mul- 
tiply on each side of the lakes will uiute the two peoples in a 
very close industrial union. It will not be essential that they 
should merge together in a political union. They will each 
be enlightened enough to harmonize their common interests 
and permit natural relations a suitable play on the basis of 
mutual political independence if that should be the prefer- 
ence of the people of either. 

British Columbia and the States of the Pacific coast will 
sustain similar close relations. The most of Mexico is a 
continuation of the high broken plateau which is so wide 



COMMON IXTEliESTS WILL IIAK.MOMZK ACTION. 531 

and rich in the United States, and is, in Mexico, endowed with 
more or less of the resources of the tropics. The extreme activ- 
ities and hirge popuhition that will soon cover the Jlocky 
Mountain region in tlie United States will communicate its 
character to Mexico and overflow into it, as the activities of 
the Valley will flow into, influence and develop Central 
America. The restless luibits of its people, the growing 
wealth and centralizing influence of tlie Valley will consoli- 
date North America by making it the focus and heart of the 
whole. The political relations must depend largely on those 
of interest but may not necessarily require consolidation by 
annexing these outlying portions. 

For the time has come, or is about to dawn, when reason 
and interest will unite men as accidental circumstances 
have heretofore separated them. Nations have thought 
more of the narrow relations and bonds which have origi- 
nated common languages and united them under separate 
governments than of the wider one of a common liuman- 
ity ; but these restricted views will disappear as relations 
become universal and interests draw them all closer together. 
The prices of produce and merchandize in London and New 
York are of the deepest interest to a large part of the world, 
for the income and general welfare of large classes are deeply 
affected by each of them somewhere. This community of 
interest and mutual interlocking of business, on a range as 
wide as the globe, has but lately assumed large proportions; 
but it will rapidly grow. This intimate interdependence is 
still more important within the limits of the United States 
and among the different sections of the country than any 
where else; soon it will be the most important point that 
enters into the consideration of general business and will con- 
tinually render the difi'erent countries of America of the 
utmost interest to each other. 

No point will become so important as that of harmonizing 
interests. Individual prosperity will depend more and more 



532 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

on discovering the true laws of business and allowing them 
the freest operation. The rule of reason and truth will be 
more and more enforced by the inexorable demands of inter- 
est. It has been seen that the great feature of Valley his- 
tory has been the freedom with which all activity has been 
organized. If any restriction has been characteristic of later 
times it was not arbitrary, or enforced from without, but 
sprang up from within. If organizations became strong 
enough and were shortsighted enough to trench unduly on 
other interests there was free play for resistance by counter 
organization, or united action by the interests injured. This 
is the rule of reason and interest and, on the whole, proceeds 
quietly and naturally to correct evils. It is not easily to be 
imagined that this quiet and satisfactory way of managing 
great interests can be abandoned for a confused, arbitrary, or 
partial system of control. 

Wisdom is necessarily gained by experience, and Anglo- 
Americans in the Valley and the country have proved them- 
selves reasonable above all men, when it was much more 
difficult to see what was best than now, or than it can be in 
the future. It is not possible to suppose that they have 
reached the limit of good sense, and therefore the future will 
gain as in the past. 

Intelligence has steadily developed, gained in clearness and 
comprehensiveness and taken the thorough and systematic 
form of science. The special business of science is to study 
all the details of a subject, or class of subjects, with the 
closest scrutiny till the laws involved are clearly seen and the 
action required to satisfy them has been discovered. Can 
society, that has been so wise in comparative ignorance, 
cease to be so when knowledge becomes comprehensive and 
well defined'^ Every impulse in man forbids his knowingly 
and deliberately acting against his own interests ; and the 
decided credit which accurate science has gained is sure 
to increase as it becomes more closely associated with the 
daily business of life. 



PEOGRESS WILL BE MORE RAPID AND STRIKING. 533 

The sum of intelligence was never so great as now ; no 
generation lias ever received the intellectual training that is 
being given the generation now obtaining its preliminary 
education. They will come on the stage to take up the active 
work of life many degrees higher in mental fitness than their 
fathers. It can not be supposed that they will gain less in 
pro])()rtion from the practical education they will add to 
mental training, to their mastery of principles and accumu- 
lation of facts. They will take hold of the burdens and solve 
the problems of their time with a skill and success corres- 
ponding to their greater advantages; still larger advantages 
will be given to tlie generation that follows them as science 
discovers the truth more and more fully, and as better 
educational systems are employed. The ratio of improve- 
ment will, then, constantly increase according to the law of 
progress. 

The constant progress of the past is a satisfactory security 
that, with the conditions improved, the progress will be more 
comprehensive and rapid. The situation in all departments 
of life at the present shows immense improvement when 
compared with any period in the past. Institutions have 
grown more secure; they were never so carefully organized 
and in so good working order as now; their results must 
be correspondingly more effective. 

Since 1860 many and great dangers have threatened the 
existence and steady progress that had then become so appar- 
ently secure. The tranquility of society and the regular 
course of business were broken in upon by a civil conflict as 
great and destructive as the resources of the country and the 
resolute will and energetic courage of the Anglo-American 
race could make it. The difference in resources alone could 
and did determine the result. The majority ruled according 
to the democratic principle, even through war; but the great 
changes following the war were as distasteful to the over- 
powered side as they well could be. They were endured 



53-i THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEi'. 

however, in a spirit and manner lionorable to tlie race, at first 
in proud and haughty silence, and afterward with such efforts 
to retrieve their situation as prudence and their views of 
what was best and right permitted. That there should have 
been no disorders, no hasty, vengeful action, would have argued 
that there were no inconsiderate and shortsighted individuals 
or communities. It would have been wholly unnatural had 
such a crisis been passed with a display of absolute wisdom 
in all the people. Yet, the general conduct of the Southern 
people was wise, dignified and moderate. The situation was 
accepted without servility, but without resistance, which 
could only make it worse, and, when liberty of action was 
recovered, their moderation must have seemed conspicuous to 
an impartial observer. Their deference to changes which 
they had disapproved and resisted, which could no longer 
be successfully opposed, was marked. 

The Southern people joined in the effort to restore har- 
mony and make the best of an unhappy situation. When, 
later, a political deadlock, for which each party blamed the 
other and which involved the passions and violence springing 
from the war, seemed to endanger the peace of the country by 
rendering a satisfactory legal decision impossible, a compro- 
mise cut the Gordian knot. In this critical situation the 
South was not behind the North in moderation. 

That crises so momentous were passed with so mucn equa- 
nimity ; that prosperity and progress did not cease in such a 
furious conflict of passions, prejudices and interests, are the 
most remarkable and significant facts of American history. 
They show that American character has no superior. No possi- 
ble future complication can be unmanageable where there is so 
much self-control and prudent forbearance. In the meantime 
the standard of public morality is being raised; the censor- 
ship of the public press and of legislative bodies is unsparing 
as unsleeping. The success and honorable estimation of both 
depend on the eificiency with which they serve public interests. 



SECURITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT IN THE FUTURE. 535 

Educational systems are constantly more extended and 
every possible improvement is soui^ht with anxious care. 
" Scientific accuracy " and thorouglmess are being introduced 
more and more into every branch of public, corporate and 
private business. The standard of requirement for both 
character and knowledge is being constantly raised. All 
the conditions of the time, all its peculiarities and relations, 
tend to impart an ever-increasing thoroughness of practical 
discipline, a more accurate and comprehensive knowledge, to 
the masses of the people. Tlie securities of the past and 
present for the future seem almost as valuable, as numerous 
and as reliable as could be desired. 

It is quite certain that, with things as they are, and with 
the wisdom and good sense, that have been so conspicuous in 
the past, to guide events, progress and prosperity must 
be still more marked in the future. Mistakes and failures 
have taught the people where danger lies; by successes they 
have learned where safety is to be found. 

One of the important securities for upright statesmanship 
in England is its peerage. The social distinction and hered- 
itary wealth of its aristocracy raise them above vulgar am- 
bitions. They have much to lose and little to gain by venality 
and a selfish exercise of power, and their intelligence and 
purity secure to them the esteem and confidence of the nation. 
It was to be seen if a thorough democracy, a radical republi- 
can people could obtain a class of servants as safe and upright 
without paying so high a price for them. It may be safely 
asserted that the history of the hundred years of American 
public life is honorable and reassuring. Only invidious party 
criticism could maintain the contrary. 

Character and conduct are examined with merciless severity, 
and the unexplained shadow of blameworthiness is fatal to 
ambition. What the individual can not do in this examina- 
tion is done by the press and by party criticism. So exacting 
has public opinion become that it may be considered among 



636 THE MISSISSIPPI VAI.LEY. 

future certainties that public life must be more and more 
pure and high toned, more and more clearsighted and just 
in action. 

Business must also share in this improving moral tone. 
The more massive it grows, the wider its relations, the more 
accurate must be its balance. Yast interests depend on 
honesty and careful adjustments, and universal intelligence 
affords ever less openings to those designing ill. The increas- 
ing enlightenment and liberality in the government and 
among the people at large raise the standard of morality and 
respectability in common life and make the censorship of 
public opinion ever more effective. Success will become con- 
stantly more difficult for the wrong doer. 

With these social and political adjustments, general pros- 
perity is certain to proceed with a freedom from checks and 
a rapidly wndening and deepening volume that have never 
before been known. Skill and experience have been joined 
with a vast capital and facilities for using them with an effect 
that no generation but this has ever possessed. All these 
will continue to accumulate more rapidly hereafter. A long 
financial depression closes with a revisal of methods, a read- 
justment of investments and of labor, and prepares for a 
more favorable future. 

And what could be more favorable than the prospect before 
a people who have struggled through difficulties of appalling 
magnitude until the very excess of attainment in setting them 
aside became a temporary embarrassment ? Nothing really 
desirable can be impossible where so much has been so easily 
achieved. Where can prosperity be greater or more certain 
than in the Mississippi Valley with a trained, wise and skillful 
population whose preparations for developing its illimitable 
resources are fairly adequate to their needs ? What can stand 
in the way of a nation that has been so true to its principles 
and mission, that has not been discouraged in the storm and 
whirlwind, has ejected all real causes of disquiet, is fairly 



PliOGKESS IS BY NATURAL DEVELOPMENT. 537 

equitable to all classes and all sections, and finds itself at the 
real connnenceuient of its career with a territory so great 
and so rich, a series of coniinercial relations so admirable, 
and a people so thrifty and intelligent ? With a situation 
so conspicuous for advantages of every kind it would be 
impossible for America not to achieve an eminence of pros- 
perity and power unknown to any other nation or I'egion. 

In moral greatness, in giving the best chance to all its 
people without distinction, in dealing vigorously, justly and 
naturally with all the vexed questions of the past she is far 
beyond the foremost nation. In material wealth and volume 
of commerce she is now second, but must necessarily soon 
be first. 

Progress, with the Republic, is a process of development 
more natural and more consistent with the interests and am- 
bitions of others than with England. America is a world in 
itself; England a narrow island whose prosperity depends 
upon a world-wide trade. The Eepublic has ample room, 
ain|)le resources in herself and ample opportunitj^ for the 
gratification of a wise and peaceful ambition in the neighbor- 
ing regions of her own continent. She could scarcely become 
stronger by absorbing the territory of British America, 
of Mexico, General America and the West Indies. In time, 
her industrial and commercial activities may gather all the 
benefits her people could wish from intercourse with these 
countries, while they develop politically under their own 
law. 

Before her own lands are completely occupied and all her 
resources developed to their fullest capacity, a brighter day 
will dawn on the nations so troubled by vain and hurtful 
ambitions. They will have learned to devote themselves, with 
all the zeal of Anglo-Americans, to the more profitable pur- 
suits of industry, to the development of their resources and 
to the maintenance of the order and quiet which peaceful 
pursuits require. Like America, their people will learn to 



538 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 

content themselves with acquiring solid wealth and power, 
developing bj internal strength, intelligence, and liberty. 
Free interchanges with the Kepublic of the Great Valley will 
give to each the substantial advantages most desired, and the 
tamily of nations will learn ,to live together as harmoniously 
and as usefully to each other as does the family of States in 
the American Union. The world of nations will then be a 
Federal Republic, not by force and by organic unity, but by 
interest, reason and common consent. The Yalley will be 
the great center of wealth, of organization and influence to 
the two Americas. The Gulf of Mexico will be possibly 
even more important than the Atlantic and Pacific, for it lies 
between the two most magnificent Valleys in the world — 
that of the Mississippi and the Amazon — which will be, in 
time, the complements of each other. 

The industries, the commerce, the energetic activities of 
Anglo-Americans can never want room to expand so long as 
they shall be eager for fresh fields. Home commerce and 
trade, interchanges between the two Americas, must finally 
be many times more important than intercourse with Europe 
or Asia. It is possible that the great rivers of the Valley 
can not be made to answer but a small part of the demands 
of trade, and that the railroad may ever be the most important 
reliance of the immense activity of the Valley; but its rolling 
waters will still point the way that a large proportion of out- 
ward bound exchanges must take. The countries about, and 
the islands in, the Gulf have remained undeveloped, but the 
time for them to lie fallow is nearly past. A vast and pros- 
perous activity will gradually grow up and will double the 
wealth of the Valley, while theirs will be increased a thousand 
fold. 

Such are some of the splendid probabilities of the future, 
apparently the necessary fruit of the freedom and the expan- 
sive energies of the people of the Valley. America showed 
the possibilities for good of a thorough democracy that gave 



THE LESSON IS FOR ALL TIMKS AxNl) COUNTRIES. 539 

every man the chance to make the most of the powers lodged 
in him by nature. Her democracy has established the value 
of freedom for all time and for the whole world. It ripens 
men, brings out their hidden qualities, their latent abilities 
to be useful to themselves and to others and to l)ring to per- 
fection the highest and truest civilization. When the Span- 
ish-American Hepublics shall have caught, or grown up to, 
the perception of the real cause of the greatness of the 
United States, they will advance with astonishing rapidity 
in the same direction, stimulated and supported by the model 
Kepublic. For this result there is everything to hope and 
little or nothinsr to fear. The certainties of the future are 
almost inconceivably great, and the possibilities are wholly 
too wide and grand to be grasped by the imagination. 



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